Mr. Abhishek Dubey, Head - Strategic Business Development Unit
Abhishek Dubey is the Head of Strategic Business Development Unit and part of NJ since last 10 years. Abhishek has played a key role in building the policy, process & system structures at NJ. He is the Chief Policy & Communications officer and also responsible for publications and the front-end - websites & on-line desks at NJ.
The Evolution:
The traditional financial advisory business is increasingly seeing reforms and innovations in virtually every aspect of business. Be it marketing, operations, customer servicing or even advisory processes, technology and digitisation has empowered advisors enormously. We see a trend where businesses are servicing much larger number of clients without geographical restraints, riding on the technology wave. Needless to say, this is one profession and industry which is at the front seat of change, and we are all proudly embracing the same.
Data: The New Buzz Word
One of the fantastic outcomes of greater use of technology and digitisation in our lives is data – something that big businesses absolutely love. The more we engage and interact using data, the more rich the data gets and thus there arises many ways and possibilities of using that data. This important customer data is now the focus point for every business and is actively being used to understand whats' going on, to know the strength & weaknesses, to make improvements and take actions to improve the bottom line. As companies grow and mature, the usage of data also evolves. Today it is being used to predict business, identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for different products, understand customer behaviour and so on. With all this change and data happening around, there is question for us – what are we doing?
Business Intelligence @ NJ:
At NJ, we are now looking at data as intelligence. Traditionally we have been using data in form of reports and MIS and we have been able to do that pretty well. We have also used data to automate processes to improve efficiency and save time & costs for our advisors and for our business. We have also gone a step ahead and used actionable data to send alerts and updates to concerned individuals – like for eg., sending you update on client birthdays with automated emailer in CRM or sharing a list of potential E-Wealth Account customers or automating insurance renewal reminders. We have been actively using data to support your business.
The bigger challenge for us now is making use of this data to increase your business and use it to also aid you in client advice. Frankly, we have been working on this for some time now but at a smaller scale due to some limitations of working manually on big data. The idea of identifying cross-selling and up-selling opportunities however remains our focus point going forward. Our efforts are directed to increase the Partners' business by identifying business opportunities in existing customers.
How we do it:
Just to highlight, in FY 2016-17, we did campaigns for ELSS & incremental SIP business and achieved success rate of 57% and 48% with respect to business amounts. Both the campaigns were run for a limited period of few months on limited number of clients.
Many would be wondering how we carry out these projects? Well, to begin with, it starts from capturing and getting data ready for our customers. Using advanced analytical methods, we then identify the most important factors which impact business. Using historical trends, we then predict the probability or likelihood of one buying a product and the target amount for every client. for eg., Rs.1,000 SIP target with 35% probability. We then block our universe with a minimum acceptable probability of say 50% for at least Rs.3,000 of SIP. Finally, we filter this universe for only Partners who have given consent for Business Intelligence activities.
Cross-Selling & Up-selling: An example for cross-selling would be about finding a person who hasn't invested in ELSS but there is data which suggests he is a probable customer for ELSS on basis of his tax status, age, income level, whether he is active customer or not, and so on. An example of up-selling would be like finding an existing equity MF investor, not having any SIP but is likely to start a new SIP on basis of data, as explained earlier.
Once we have a list of clients ready with us, we work on promoting our campaign idea using multiple modes of communication like email, SMS, Client Desk banner, voice blast, etc. The objective is to push the idea of say increasing SIP or buying ELSS in the minds of the customer so that he becomes aware of it or gets reminded or warms up to the idea. At this time he may directly approach the advisor for business or may be more open to any pitch/push from the advisor for same. He may also give his active interest to us on our campaigns which we then share as an opportunity in CRM and update our Partners. A campaign finally ends with us evaluating the success and business received from the universe.
To conduct these activities, NJ is actively working with an external consultant who are experts in applying intelligence to business analytics.
Why Business Analytics?
The conversion figures for last year projects are very impressive which simply suggests that the universe of potential customers we identified were very likely to purchase ELSS or increase SIP. Partners who would have actively worked on these leads / opportunities would have got better results, better conversion and productivity while saving time and costs. This is the primary advantage of working on a logical set of potential target universe based on data.
At NJ we believe many Partners would have a good understanding of a customer and would likely know of opportunities for more business from him. However, our effort is greatly augment or strengthen our Partners' capability with more actionable data on a bigger scale which can be used more productively. Data driven approach become much more feasible and advisable once you have a large number of customers and there are increasingly a large number of products and services in your advisory basket. Its a win-win scenario for both the advisor and the customer too as he gets reminded of a product /service that he likely needs. Data driven approach will also eliminate any personal bias and notions we may hold for any client and remind us of clients which we may have missed altogether or are not close enough.
Business analytics also presents an opportunity for a Partner to work in an organised manner. There is no need to promote every product or service to every customer. It would help you work in a more productive manner where one idea to pushed to a client who is ideally suited for it. It thus strengthens your advisory capabilities while saving precious time and costs in business.
Going forward:
Having proper, actionable and adequate data with historical and behavioural trends of customer is a challenge which we have worked a lot on. We are now becoming capable of working on multiple projects in different groups of customers simultaneously in a much easier and less time consuming manner. We have also worked on developing multiple communication channels too to reach out to clients, again saving time & costs on behalf of our Partners while ensuring quality outreach. With these things in place, we are now aiming to launch multiple campaigns this year. We intend to begin with SIP (renewal and stopped) and then work on ELSS and then other aspects of SIP like new & incremental SIP. We strongly believe that business analytics will gain prominence as an dependable friend to help grow your business in times to come.
Getting There...
At NJ, we are making all efforts on technology front to empower you and your business. We would love to see every Partner as capable as any other big business backed by our strong technology and support services. But our efforts would succeed only if you actively embrace the same and adopt them in your advisory practice. Your active participation will give the meaning and the ultimate form to our efforts. After all, our success is in your success and growth. Let me thus invite you to embrace whole heartedly one more important change for a better future.