Accenture and Avanade have announced a solution dedicated to helping financial services firms transform their customer experience through greater personalisation in a digital world.
Developed in collaboration with Microsoft and built on top of Microsoft Dynamics CRM the Accenture Customer Analytic Insights Solution for Microsoft (ACAI) helps financial service firms, including retail banks, insurers and capital markets firms, provide differentiated customer experiences and more profitable offerings.
Financial services firms can use ACAI’s predictive analytics to offer customers next best actions – such as recommended products and services – personalised to the individual history and needs of each customer. The ACAI solution leverages the financial services experience Accenture, Avanade and Microsoft have acquired via engagements with hundreds of financial services organisations.
As financial services customer behaviour evolves in a digital world, customers are more willing to look at alternatives to traditional providers, placing greater pressure on incumbent financial services firms to differentiate their offerings.
Accenture research predicts that by 2020, more than 30% of banking revenues could be at risk thanks to new competitors and new trends. Financial services firms must therefore look for new ways to retain customers and win new business.
With a greater focus on personalisation, providers can use solutions like ACAI to take a proactive customer-first approach, offering customers what they need rather than what the firm believes it should offer.
Developed on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, ACAI brings together innovative analytics capabilities and technologies into a single integrated solution to help financial services firms offer proactive next best actions across any channel. Accenture’s Customer Analytics Record (CAR), created from decades of financial services experience, provides a complete omni-channel view of customer activity in a format optimised for realtime decision-making.
ACAI then uses Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to analyse customer activity and execute robust analytical models that predict customer behaviour and recommend next best actions. An innovative next best action execution capability, developed by Avanade, enables next best actions to be integrated with any interaction channel and system, including customer service channels using Microsoft Dynamics and digital channels.
The result is a solution that enables realtime decision-making and recommendations, and actions to be presented and applied across any customer interaction channel.
“Innovative financial services firms are using analytics to gain insights that help them make better business decisions and present customers with more attractive and tailored offers,” says Piercarlo Gera, senior MD of Accenture Distribution and Marketing Services.
“The Accenture Customer Analytic Insights Solution for Microsoft combines decades of financial services experience with proven tools and advanced capabilities. The new solution can help clients drive differentiated products and customer experience, helping firms establish a competitive advantage and ultimately positioning them for growth.”
“We are working with Accenture and Avanade on a number of customer and solution projects in financial services, and ACAI is the latest innovation in our quest to help financial services firms transform and succeed in the digital world,” adds Karen Cone, GM: Financial Services at Microsoft. “ACAI represents how Microsoft technology can be used to help financial services transform into more insightful, productive and customer-centric organizations.”
“Enabling new analytics capabilities like ‘next best action’ helps our clients transform their relationships with their customers,” commments Jeyan Jeevaratnam, corporate vice-president” growth and strategy and lead banking executive at Avanade. “Working closely with Accenture and Microsoft, we are creating real solutions that enable our clients to lead the future of customer personalisation through real-time customer insights.”