Developing relationship management
info exchange
What's NewS Issue 3 April/May 2000 3
Late April saw an important conference of Rabobank International Relationship
Managers in Europe. Organized by Europe's regional management, the conference
in Utrecht attracted more than 60 relationship managers and product specialists
from our entire European network, as well as nearly a dozen specialist speakers.
Clear upside
Joint learning
Transnational shift
Customerlineup
Truly unique
Follow up
Explaining that F&A remains the lynch
pin for RI and RMs will play a key
role in future success, Ton Toebosch com-
pared that role to conducting an crches-
tra. The analogy reflects the many compo-
nents that come into play when working
closely witli customers to meet their needs
and maximize business opportunities in
our target markets. He also made it clear
that performance will henceforth be mea-
sured according to the total revenues gen-
erated by the relationship in question, ir-
respective of the product or services
involved. It reflects the increased under-
standing that RI's cliënt business is sub-
optimal. Against that backdrop, a lot of
hard work has been done in the past few
months by Patrick Guyver and Ben Davies
on the Client Relationship Management/
InSight v2 initiative, which was launched
and discussed at the conference.
Standardized
cliënt and knowl-
edge manage
ment tools will
be introduced un-
der this program,
as well as a cliënt
focused MIS. All
are crucial in
helping relationship bankers succeed. The
findings and recommendations show that
CRM, as the initiative is known, has clear
upside potential and can contribute signif-
icantly to the improvement of RI's
cost/benefit ratio. The discussion revealed
a clear front-line appetite for CRM within
the business and a strong support for a
fast implementation with a regional prior-
ity for Europe and Asia. In the final week
of June an important F&A Strategy Im
plementation workshop will take place,
organized by I lans Megens supported by
Niek Streefkerk, Iwona Lechocka, Bruce
Fozer and Harkirat Singh, with participa-
tion of all RI functions around the net
work.
the quickly changing environment where
all players in every industry are building
their relations in the chain in a ntuch
more fundamental way than ever before.
This is just as true for F&A companies
and for the relationship between compa
nies and their banks. 'Two years ago, in
many European countries, the name of the
game for a number of RM's was to line up
as many F&A relationships as possible,
In this workshop the exact role of
relationship management, interaction with
product specialists, required skills and sys-
tems, including RoS measurement sys-
tems, and related investments in people
and support tools like InSight will be de-
tailed. Cross-border interaction and joint
learning from market developments in
specifk F&A sectors will be a strong focus
on, in order to enable relationship
bankers to maximize cliënt return on a
sustained basis.
Henri Jacquand (left), RI's European re
gional head, was quick to take up the
issue. 'We are fundamentally revantping
the role of the relationship manager,' he
says. 'The RM has a responsibility to play
a crucial leadership role from initiation
through to the delivery of a solution. This
means developing a genuinely strategie
relationship with our clients by "under-
standing their strategie objectives and
identifying ways and solutions that meet
their needs.' What's more, because of the
increasingly transnational nature of our
European business, the ability to work
with product specialists as a team will he
crucial to our bottom-line success. 'The
name of the game is combining local and
global skills,'Jacquand told participants.
This coincides with changing market pri-
orities. Increasingly cliënt relationships
are driven by partnering. This relates to
and to offer whatever the cliënt wanted,
without necessarily building a genuinely
valuable strategie relationship,' Jacquand
says. 'We didn't use our knowledge to dif-
ferentiate ourselves in the marketplace the
way we should have'.
In the countries where we're not a domes-
tic bank we have chosen to focus on a
small number of clients who bring us a
real return on solvency. We'11 deliver the
truly unique, knowledge-driven products
and services for which we can charge a
premium. As a strategie partner, we will
not necessarily provide a full range of ser
vices as a result of this portfolio reposi-
tioning, but rather the special ones, for in-
stance cross-border deals, where we have
the resources to really shine.
As a follow-up to this conference, Ton
Toebosch took direct Board ownership of
the CRM/InSight v2 initiative. While the
initial focus will be on F&A, Hans Me
gens and the F&A Strategy Implementa-
tion/Business Planning and CRM/InSight
teams will have daily management respon
sibility for the respective components. Re
gional Management will be actively in
volved with a fast track rollout, focusing
on Europe and Asia in the first stage.
What's NewS will be following develop
ments closely and reporting back to you
in every issue.
