Agile project management streamlines Salesforce implementation at Asteron

In the highly competitive financial services market, Asteron’s customer services reputation is one of the things that set it apart from the competition. With rapid business growth, its Call Centre began to find their legacy Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools cumbersome and even costly in terms of lost productivity and missed sales opportunities.

As Asteron began the process of choosing a replacement CRM system - eventually choosing Salesforce.com - they turned to Fronde and its Agile Project Management approach to integrate the new system.

“The CRM implementation was a huge step in ensuring the Call Centre is ready for future growth and we are already looking at further ways to improve. The success of the Salesforce.com implementation and the way it was managed by Fronde has provided the business with confidence in a future strategy that includes more change.”

Terry Gaze, GM Wealth Management, Asteron

The Client

Asteron, a member of the Suncorp Group, is one of the largest financial service providers in New Zealand and Australia. They have many key business activities including life insurance, superannuation savings, funds management, and trustee services.

Asteron has approximately 7 million customers with over $676 million of life insurance premiums and in excess of $29 billion funds under management.

The Challenge

As with most companies, Asteron’s systems evolved as business needs grew. This required a Call Centre Operator to refer to a stack of nine different systems to gather enough information to resolve customer issues.

Although this situation was always less than ideal, it was manageable when the company was small. Today the Call Centre manages 160,000 calls per year, and it is no longer viable to maintain this complex web of systems.

After identifying the need for change, Asteron still faced its biggest challenge – how to successfully manage the selection, introduction and integration of a new CRM solution while continuing to provide customers with the high level of service they expected.

The Process

Asteron undertook a thorough evaluation of potential Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems for their Call Centre. They eventually selected a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) internet hosted CRM from Salesforce.com. The Salesforce.com CRM is the fastest growing CRM product globally due largely to its flexibility and seamless integration with backroom systems.

As an on-demand product, the Salesforce.com CRM eliminated the requirement for ongoing investment in IT infrastructure. This simplified Asteron’s operations and eliminated obsolescence issues of outdated hardware. The SaaS business model dramatically simplifies implementation yet it still provides the greatest functionality available and continually updates the features, capabilities, and performance of the CRM eliminating the risk of it becoming outdated.

The next step was to find the right partner to manage the integration of the new CRM. Asteron turned to Fronde Systems Group to manage the project on the back of its extensive experience with Salesforce.com.

Fronde’s Agile Project Management (APM) perfectly addressed the need for an iterative approach that would provide seamless integration for staff and be invisible to customers during implementation. Fronde’s in-depth APM experience helped Asteron move forward much more quickly.
The Agile delivery allowed the Asteron team to realistically segment their Call Centre project into phases that delivered solutions to a workable timeline and budget.

The Outcome

The CRM project exceeded Asteron’s expectations.

The Salesforce.com CRM has streamlined the Call Centre operation as well as increasing sales. Suncorp looks to this implementation as one of the most successful projects in recent company history.

Most importantly, we were able to resolve our support issues. The system is so flexible I can easily get what I need out of it, whether it’s modifying reports or managing marketing campaigns. Any one of us can produce information and reports that used to require IT resources”, says Louise Way, Asteron Call Centre Manager.

Productivity has also gone up with staff reporting that the new CRM system provides them with a much better understanding of their customers’ needs and the whole project was completed without customers noticing any decrease in the quality of customer service they receive from Asteron.

Salesforce.com was also impressed with the outcome of the teamwork between Fronde and Asteron.

The implementation was impressive, as it has managed to satisfy already complex business requirements without adding any additional complexity. The overall project design was very clean and simple thus enabling good usability, which is critical to any Call Centre implementation,” says Diana Wells, Principal Consultant for Salesforce.com.

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