Case Study I - Insurance Sector

Background

This case study focuses on one of the UK’s major retail banks which provides a full range of financial products to its millions of customers. These products are fully regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Consequently, to demonstrate both ethical selling and best practice, the bank is required to have full histories of every transaction and they must record the competence levels of the sales people selling those products. In addition, given the costs of running a large sales force, the bank was concerned about how to best manage its sales teams to maximise their productivity.

Challenge

The regulations require each sales person to have an up-to-date dossier documenting their qualifications and CPD. These dossiers also need to have evidence of the clear and regular management of that sales person, eg observed meetings, coaching sessions, etc. This was becoming an onerous task for both sales people and their managers. The bank estimated a considerable amount of time was being taken by each person to maintain these records. In addition, analysing sales activity and sales performance was becoming increasingly difficult as sales activity was maintained on paper and MS Office, whilst sales performance was held on a ‘back office’ database. In short, a combination of increasing administration, plus disparate data on performance, meant the bank was at real risk with the regulator and of having poor sales performance.

Response

Worksmart enabled each sales person’s dossier to be held electronically. Most importantly, it also prompted the processes, eg management observations, CPD activity, etc. This ensured the bank remained compliant with the FSA. Worksmart also became the tool for each sales person to record their activity, which was then contrasted with sales performance, ie KPIs imported from the bank’s ‘back office’ database. These joined up solutions provided sales people and sales management with a single system for managing both compliance and sales performance.

Outcome

Using Worksmart, the bank has been able to eliminate paperwork from its entire sales compliance activity. This is important as it has saved sales people and their managers significant amounts of time completing the documentation and distributing it around the bank. It has also ensured the process disciplines and transparency necessary to enable the bank to minimise its exposure to the regulator, eg provides clear ‘audit trails’ when complaints are made. This is strategically important as the financial penalties and ‘reputational’ consequences of being non-compliant with the FSA are huge. Finally, for the first time, sales management have clear and real time information on both sales activity and performance. Consequently, sales managers are far clearer about performance levels and so can coach their sales staff in the key areas where they can improve.

Client Comment

“Our analysis shows that Worksmart has saved over half a day a week of every Sales Manager’s time, plus an almost equal amount of time for each sales person. Across the whole of the sales organisation that is considerable.” – Sales Director.