ECONOMICS

The Bank of Ireland, Retail Division, has partnered with Cognos, the world leader in corporate performance management solutions, and Cognos' strategic OEM partner, Fidelity Information Services, a division of Fidelity National Financial, to gain increased insight into customer and product profitability. The Bank of Ireland has implemented PMG System's TruPROFIT solution suite, which integrates Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence Series and Cognos ReportNet. PMG Systems is a division of Fidelity Information Services. For the Bank of Ireland, understanding customer profitability means aggregating customer data collected across multiple touch points, including deposits, retail loans, mortgages, and credit cards. With PMG's TruCUSTOMER and TruANALYTICS solutions, components of the TruPROFIT suite, customer account profitability information is created and the account level information is aggregated and pushed out to Bank of Ireland's customer relationship managers, enabling them to segment the customer base and understand and measure growth in their portfolios. In a later phase, this level of detailed information will be used to focus sales and marketing efforts toward their most profitable customer segments. "Understanding what drives customer profitability is the Holy Grail in retail banking, and implementing the TruPROFIT solution suite brings us much closer to that goal," said Eugene McCarthy, Head of Profitability Measurement in Bank of Ireland's Retail Division. "We now have increased understanding of our customer base, across all product businesses, as well as the ability to provide our customer relationship managers with meaningful, actionable information that impacts their decision-making process. With Cognos and PMG, customer data is much more consumable and therefore, much more strategic to our organisation." "The combined functionality of PMG's profitability applications with Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence Series delivers a rapid return on investment, enabling our clients to have immediate impact on improving profitability and retention," said Frank McKeon, managing director, PMG Systems, a division of Fidelity Information Services. "TruPROFIT enables customers like the Bank of Ireland to understand the value of their customers and more importantly what the key drivers are influencing customer value, thus enabling them to more effectively establish strategy to enhance this value long term." "Our strategic OEM partnership with Fidelity National Financial enables us to expand our global reach and help our mutual clients understand and improve customer productivity. Understanding the profitability of products, sales channels and customers and how that relates to overall business performance is key to corporate success," said Leo Tucker, director, banking solutions, Cognos.