Published: August 01, 2010
With more than 20 entities making up the UniCredit Group, originating from Italy, Germany and Austria, the bank is characterised by diversity and a strong appreciation of cultural and financial differentiation. However, in addition to recognising and responding to our customers’ in-country needs in the 22 countries in which we do business, we recognised the importance of delivering a consistent experience across countries in order to satisfy the needs of our clients who operate cross-border. When it comes to cash management, over the past 18 months we have focused heavily on further harmonising major processes across countries and entities to enhance the experience of these clients who operate cross-border, such as reporting, cash pooling, and the contracting process.
We have a shared project plan with a client, which provides transparency over tasks, responsibilities, dependencies and is regularly updated with progress and 'red flags'.
In addition to cross-border services, clients also require tailor-made solutions in each country. Optimising our clients’ cross-border and in-country requirements is key to UniCredit’s success. To facilitate this, we have an extensive branch network which provides local flexibility, supported by efficient standard processes that ensure the appropriate level of consistency and professionalism. These developments make it easier for our clients to do business with UniCredit, both at the start of our relationship and in the long term.
Effectively, our teams work on a matrix management basis, aligned with other respected Global Transaction Banking units of UniCredit Group. We have dedicated cash management teams in each country, together with project management and implementation support. In addition, we have central management by function to ensure that the client experience is aligned across countries. For multinational clients, we tend to provide centralised services, but they are still able to benefit from in-country, local support.
Firstly, by harmonising the contracting process across cash management and eBanking services, we can reduce the time and effort required to complete the necessary legal documentation. There is a designated Global Account Manager (GAM) supported by a cash management product specialist who are responsible for the relationship with the client, who can ensure that project delivery is aligned with the client’s original objectives and expectations. A project and implementation (P&I) manager heads the project, which involves a dedicated team. This P&I manager is the client’s main contact throughout the project, ensuring clarity and consistency.
We have a shared project plan with a client, which provides transparency over tasks, responsibilities, dependencies and is regularly updated with progress and ‘red flags’. We have clear communication channels and an escalation process so that clients can be confident that any issues are receiving the right level of attention within UniCredit. We based our project plan on realistic time scales, pillared on many years of experience, so that we can accommodate unforeseen events without jeopardising project delivery.
Finally, in addition to consulting clients informally throughout the implementation process, we go through a final project evaluation process as a way of ensuring a continuous process of improvement.
I mentioned the importance of communication between UniCredit and our clients, but this also applies to communication between a group treasury or head office and subsidiary companies. Often subsidiaries are not aware of group treasury plans and objectives, the motivation behind certain initiatives and their role within a project. Client resource is a related challenge, as few companies have the ability to bring in additional staff during a project, so they need to manage with existing staff, not only at group treasury level but also within subsidiaries, which may be an even greater challenge. Conversely, some companies make excessive use of third-party consultants.
These scenarios often lead to confusion and frustration. Too few resources creates delays or risks a decline in quality. Too many external consultants often means that while the project can be completed on time and to high professional standards, there may be a mismatch between the company’s expectations and project deliverables. Additionally, project knowledge may be lost at the end of the project, with a lack of internal ownership.Having senior P&I managers working closely with the sales team from the start of the project helps to avoid these issues, by sharing experiences gained from working with many clients. We ensure that project timelines reflect the resourcing available, and that the project is clearly documented to ensure no loss of knowledge. We include subsidiaries as well as group treasury in the initial project kick-off so that everyone has common expectations and understands the rationale. Finally, we encourage senior decision-makers in the client organisation to take a role in the project to remove roadblocks and balance divergent opinions.[[[PAGE]]]
Around five years ago, we started to roll out a customer satisfaction survey programme, initially in Germany, then Austria and now across the group. This is in addition to the detailed post-project questionnaire that we go through with our cash management clients that I mentioned before. These processes have proved very successful at identifying customer priorities, assessing where our delivery exceeds expectations and where we need to focus our resources. We have been extremely gratified at how positive the feedback has been; for example, one of our largest cash management clients recently said that although the company had been through similar projects with other banks, its experience with UniCredit had been the most positive.
Communication is key, both internally and with the client, at all stages of the relationship. For example, projects and implementation staff are involved in a project right from the initial RFP process, to ensure that team members are aligned and there is no loss of knowledge about a client’s business or expectations as a project moves through its various stages.
An active approach to implementation is particularly difficult in a multi-country implementation, e.g., using different languages. We have a wide diversity of people in the group, and particularly in central and eastern Europe, we have young, highly motivated employees. It is important to use the experience we have gained over many years with the dynamism, language skills and commitment to innovation that our employees bring, so we warmly encourage cross-training and the sharing of skills.
Communication is key, both internally and with the client, at all stages of the relationship.
In addition to the expertise and attitude of our team, and our focus on regular and transparent communication, our technology is also a differentiating feature. Our innovative eBanking tools are developed in-house, which gives us full control over its capabilities and ensures that we can prioritise the functionality and user features that our clients require. Connectivity is a key priority for us. Not only are we investing heavily in our proprietary solutions, but our objective is also to be the leading bank in Europe for SWIFT Corporate Access, including new initiatives such as eBAM (electronic bank account management). While these goals are aggressive, we have a realistic and pragmatic plan for achieving them. For example, looking at eBAM, the first step is to standardise account opening processes across countries. While UniCredit is well-positioned to achieve this, there are regulatory obstacles in some countries, such as Russia, where there are over 20 documents that are legally required to be completed.
Despite this, UniCredit remains committed to leveraging innovative tools on top of our integrated delivery model, to enhance our services to customers and support their evolving objectives.
UniCredit was recently awarded one of the largest payment projects in Europe, with more than one million cross-border payments each year. This project went live in April/May 2010, and we have received excellent feedback, with the customer’s experience of working with UniCredit exceeding its expectations, with a strong approach to implementation and rapid response times. Another example is a recent XML project that we realised together with the client. The company won a major award for the project, which leveraged expertise from both UniCredit and the client organisation, and demonstrated UniCredit’s capabilities in XML, routing and conversion services via our EuropeanGate platform, ERP integration and SWIFTNet competence.
In some cases, banks do not operate dedicated implementation teams, and even with a major project lasting 12-18 months, team members often have to juggle their project responsibilities with their regular role, and do not build up expertise of client projects. By adopting an approach of having full-time project resources, we can avoid conflicting time pressures and leverage experience gained from one project to benefit the next. In this way, we are able to deliver a professional, timely and disciplined project, with deliverables matching or exceeding client expectations.
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