Bank Uses Sedona System To Connect With Customers

Harbor Bank of Maryland recently selected Sedona's customer relationship management (CRM) solution, Intarsia, to provide new capabilities in better managing its customer interactions and expanding relationships with prospective clients.

Harbor Bank will use Intarsia to define which customers should be targeted for certain marketing campaigns. The bank currently sends product offers to its entire base of 15,000 customers. Intarsia will help the bank determine which customers are better prospects for cross and up-sell opportunities as well as help branch staff know which customers have been targeted with which campaigns.

Intarsia will be used by the bank's branch administration area and the loan department to develop targeted marketing campaigns for current and prospective clients. Harbor Bank of Maryland, a $210 million bank with seven branch locations in the Baltimore area, will utilize the systems via an online application service from Sedona, which provides CRM solutions to small and mid-sized banks.

"Being a community bank, we have limited marketing dollars so we want to make sure that we utilize those dollars in the best way possible and I think this system will direct us in that way," said Garnetta Massey, senior vice president of administration at Harbor Bank. "Intarsia will allow us to really know our customer base at a glance so we can determine what relationships they have with the bank and we'll be able to better serve their needs."

Intarsia is an Internet-based CRM solution that provides personalized customer interactions and profitability management to help optimize sales and marketing opportunities, specifically for small-to-mid-sized financial services companies.

Available as an application service or as a purchased software license, Intarsia includes features such as profitability management, lead tracking, Web-based reporting, and campaign management.

Harbor Bank will also use an Intarsia component, Lead Factory, to convert from a manual lead tracking process to an automated system that will allow the bank's branch managers and loan officers to qualify leads and focus on those particular prospects.

Lead Factory can help a financial institution measure the effectiveness of its marketing programs and lead sources. The Web-based system includes productivity features such as de-duplification of leads and contacts, easy import and export of data from or to other systems and applications, customizable mailing list creation, and the capability of sending a single contact to multiple lead paths should they be candidates for multiple opportunities.

By combining Intarsia with Lead Factory's sales and referral management capabilities, Harbor Bank plans to boost its customer acquisition and retention efforts, according to Mike Crofts, vice president of sales at King of Prussia, Pa.-based Sedona.

Last July, Sedona added three key capabilities to the Intarsia package: support for wireless devices such as laptops and handheld PCs; a portal front-end that allows individual companies and users to personalize their own Intarsia look and feel; and use of the software on an application service basis, significantly reducing the cost and time required to implement a comprehensive CRM solution.