Customers on Cloud Nine

In the banking and financial domain, IT is employed for
communicationconnectivity and business process engineering. Very interestingly,
with the penetration of technology in every sphere of day-to-day interaction,
tech savvy customers are looking forward to similar experience in the financial
sector, wherein the demand for critical information is easily registered and
catered to. Information technology assists in custom tailored product
development, market infrastructure along with deployment of techniques for risk
monitoring and to reach out to distant markets. The ability to dissipate
information accurately and in a secured way is essential to users of financial
services.

Heavily dependent on IT and communication technologies for its operations,
Axis Asset Management currently operates out of sixty-two locations with more
than 250 users connected to central servers at its Nariman Point head office.
The infrastructure includes secure firewall and remote VPN access, which have
done away with the need for costly long distance leased lines and support costs.
Moreover, VPN helps overcoming scalability by tapping the network capability
that is easily available. Apart from VPN, firewall is a very critical part of
the IT operations in financial sectors, since it involves sourcing and
maintaining critical information pertaining to the finances of clients. The
firewall monitors sensitive information sent through emails as VPN involve
tapping of public networks. Firewall monitors outbound data traffic, and at the
same time, bars access to sources on external networks.

Tejas Shah, assistant vice president, IT, Axis Asset Management Cloud based CRM applications offer real-time visibility into the sales status

In addition, the company has data center operations as a part of the IT
operations of the company. In order to ensure business continuity, companies
rely on IT for their business operations. This calls for an infrastructure
framework that minimizes disruption and loss of information.

Retaining the Customer

In a dynamic market, success is more or less co-related to customer
retention. Constant interaction with intermediaries and end user customers in
order to develop personalized relationships based on their needs helps in
securing loyalties of the customers. It is critical to store customer related
information and accord treatment depending on the values. The increasing need to
address ever increasing customer requirements of price and service has led to
the implementation of CRM in financial services.

"Axis Asset Management is running CRM over cloud with a maximum of 99.9%
uptime. CRM is shifting toward cloud computing. Financial companies can leverage
web based cloud applications to run their CRM, and in turn, get a high return on
their investment. Cloud based CRM applications offer real-time visibility into
the sales status, thereby helping the sales personnels to interpret data with
substantial citations," says Tejas Shah, assistant vice president, IT, Axis
Asset Management.

In the financial domain, cloud based CRM helps the marketing department to
track leads and sources, then route leads to the sales people. This helps to
analyze what is working and what is not.

Green Touch to Finance

The organization has come up with innovative ways of saving energy such as
switching off unwanted IT systems or peripherals when not required. Newsletters
and market information are sent to investors and distributors via email rather
than sending hard copies. The Axis Bank Financial Advisory team offers a unique
One Page Portfolio Snapshot report across investment products to the customers
investing in mutual funds. This report can be viewed through the companys
Internet banking module. This is a part of another green IT initiative to
introduce paperless operations in business.

Atreyee Datta

atreyeed@cybermedia.co.in