This is the first in a series focused on the value of establishing success criteria for banks seeking solutions partners. Using the Offer Management Buyer’s Guide for Personalized Offers can deliver measurable benefits to financial institutions seeking greater personalization and profits in a time of record consumer spending.
Executing on personalized offers has become a clarion call for financial services companies in today’s environment. The threat from big tech has made the need to deliver relevant products, pricing and experiences a “must have” strategy to survive and thrive. This has empowered finserv companies to prioritize key goals of offer management:
- Create bundles and relationship pricing that reflect to the customer the value of the relationship, enabling higher retention
- Deploy product and pricing for very targeted segments to get the best risk adjusted returns
- Dynamically price and suggest the next best product based on the consumer’s behaviors
All of this has to be done at warp speed, while ensuring flawless execution and no compliance errors.
Best Practices: Findings from Naehas’ Analysis
As a trusted partner to some of the most sophisticated marketers and compliance teams in financial services, Naheas has a unique vantage point from which to offer perspective and support. Our team recently completed an analysis of five leading financial organizations on how they built out their offer management strategy and platform. We covered the following areas:
- What was their vision around building out an offer management strategy?
- What were the specific use cases they needed?
- What specific requirements are part of the vendor search and selection process?
The result, an Offer Management Buyer’s Guide. It includes the best practices to create the processes, train the people, and deploy platforms to deliver significant business value.
Benefits of a Good Solutions Partner: What to Expect
Working with the right offer management partner can deliver vital, valuable benefits. In a highly-regulated, complex industry, careful vendor selection delivers strong ROI.
Accountability. Accuracy. Automated workflows. Dedicated support. Easily integrated, scalable solution. Ensured compliance. Faster offer fulfillment. In-sync collaboration. Increased transparency and efficiencies. Reduced costs and cycle times. Risk mitigation. Improved customer satisfaction. Top-line growth visibility.
Articulating a Vision
Before seeking an offer management solution, asking a few important questions is critical:
- Have we determined the problem that needs to be solved?
- What use cases will be included (Retail, Card, Multi-relationship, Refer-a-friend)?
- Do we agree on which pain points are most important to address?
- Is there stakeholder alignment on how goals will be measured?
This process helps inform and optimize the next step: establishing criteria for selecting vendors who serve as trusted partners across the enterprise — strategy, operations, execution, compliance and reporting teams.
Criteria for Success in Vendor Selection:
Establishing Requirements
Developed as a one-stop guide to securing a solutions provider, the Requirements Checklist within the Offer Management Buyer’s Guide for Personalized Offers covers more than 75 criteria factors. Here’s a summary of its components.
Functional requirements ensure the solution meets all of the necessary components of the entire offer lifecycle: Offer Strategy; Offer Eligibility; Offer Presentment; Offer Fulfillment.
When selecting the right solution provider, identify those who can meet all the functional requirements that you need now and in the future. Ensure the solution has the ability to manage the complete product and pricing lifecycle. Vendors who offer tools and technology to address these functional requirements become extremely valuable partners.
Non-functional requirements — third-party integrations, an enterprise grade solution, and industry expertise — are essential considerations in vendor selection. When reviewing success criteria, offer management teams who focus on these critical components will be well-positioned to select vendors whose solution integrates with their existing architecture.
Simple Solutions for Success
More than ever, effective and efficient offer management solutions are vital for financial services companies. The goals: deliver more personalized customer experiences, and grow revenue.
Seeking and finding the right combination of capabilities and benefits calls for identifying platform solutions purposefully-built to answer your needs. Selecting a vendor with unique, automated, rule-driven tools will go far in enabling the enterprise to build and link complex offers to the right audience, in the right channel, every time, with efficiency and accuracy.
Leveraging the Buyer’s Guide and its Requirements Checklist provides financial services leaders a critical tool for confidently selecting a Solutions Provider. Quite simply: Trust. Is. Everything.
