AXA Australia turns to IBM’s CRM offering

AXA Australia has implemented a CRM application based on IBM software from integrator Coordimax.

Coordimax provided AXA Australia’s business development managers (BDMs) a centralised repository of customer and sales data so they can provide an improved service to their customers.

The Coordimax CRM offering played a role in the restructuring of AXA Australia’s sales force, which has helped boost AXA’s sales revenue by 32 percent in the year following the implementation.

AXA Australia needed a customer relationship management (CRM) application to store and track its network of licensees and financial advisors. Its existing system was deemed slow, underutilised, poorly integrated and could not keep pace with the company’s needs.

Barry Wyatt, national manager of sales promotion at AXA Australia, said: “We had to keep tabs on our growing base of clients. Who were they? Who was their relationship manager at AXA? What activity was happening with these particular advisors? With such a large pool of advisors, we needed a robust activity management system.”

Wyatt said it took 17 seconds to open a page in the old system and the information on it was sketchy, so the sales people were not using it.

“We needed an information system that encouraged business development managers to use it and see it as a beneficial tool.”

Wyatt said all of the AXA’s systems are integrated and in the past the firm would input the data into one system and then it feeds through to everyone. However the new system significantly outperforms the old one, allowing BDMs to connect to their data much more quickly.

“Screens now load in just over a second,” said Wyatt. “No-one from the sales force complains about the speed and BDMs are happy to use the system. They are actually entering what happened at their meetings whereas before, because it took them so long, they didn’t do it.”