Hong Kong Commercial Bank In New Commitment For CRM

In a 1 million dollar agreement with market leading decision-support software supplier SAS Institute, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) has made a firm commitment to enhance customer service via SAS technology.

The multi-year agreement covers a range of SAS software modules for data warehousing, online analytical processing (OLAP) and reporting tools. The bank also licensed Enterprise Miner data-mining package from SAS Institute.

Hong Kong's leading commercial bank, HSBC has been using SAS software since 1984 when it was first introduced as a mainframe reporting and monitoring tool. SAS software is behind many of the bank's decision-support and analysis systems. This new agreement will allow HSBC to deploy SAS software more widely across the organization.

Y.B. Yeung, head of information technology at The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, said, "It is our aim to continuously improve our services and relationships with customers. With SAS Institute's reporting and new data mining software, we can improve our understanding of customers and deliver tailored services to them."

With its purchase of Enterprise Miner, HSBC is one of the first banks in Hong Kong to implement data-mining techniques as part of a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

"Using SAS Enterprise Miner, we will be able to expedite the process of model and segmentation development by using different data mining techniques," Yeung said. "It will ultimately help us to optimize our strategy in cross-selling, up-selling and retention initiatives."

In a pilot project earlier this year, HSBC's Personal Banking Development division worked with consulting staff from SAS Institute on a cross-selling initiative. Using Enterprise Miner, the team was able to identify which additional product was most likely to be purchased by a certain group of customers. It then used modeling techniques to create a list of those customers most likely to purchase the product in order to conduct a highly targeted marketing campaign. The result demonstrated improved customer targeting and set the basis for further exploration in the data mining area. This initial success was highly encouraging, but both HSBC and SAS Institute staff believe that with more advanced modeling on a wider cross section of customers, the returns will be even greater in the future.

"Data mining has proved its value time and again for organizations in Europe and the U.S., and we are now seeing rapid growth for this technology in Asia," said Chris Franklin, general manager of SAS Institute Hong Kong. "Growth has been slower in Hong Kong, but the leaders in their respective fields are now realizing the benefits of data mining, particularly for implementing effective CRM strategies. HSBC has always led the way among Hong Kong's banking industry in using technology to improve the services it offers. This latest agreement with SAS Institute is a further sign of the bank's commitment to a truly customer-orientated marketing strategy."

For more information, visit http://www.sas.com/hongkong.