CLIENT CASE STUDY
C&N Fuels Growth and Efficiency with FSC Case Management and Retail CRM
CUSTOMER
SOLUTION STACK
Financial Services Cloud
Sales Cloud
Shield
Encompass
Fiserv
Snowflake
Boomi
Moody’s Analytics
STORY SUMMARY
C&N boasts a rich 159-year history marked by a series of acquisitions and strong organic growth by executing on their mission of “creating value through lifelong relationships.” Today, they stand as a full-service financial institution with 30 offices spanning Pennsylvania and New York.
To fuel continued growth and organizational efficiency, C&N turned to Salesforce and Fortimize at the beginning of 2022. Since then, C&N has doubled their monthly processed cases with a Financial Services Cloud case management solution. They also launched a Sales Cloud retail CRM to better track referrals, manage their sales pipeline, and view householding information. The outcome: streamlined sales processes, enhanced employee satisfaction, and a unique advantage positioning the bank for future success.
From day one, I felt a strong commitment from the Fortimize team to ensure this entire project would be completed on time and within budget. In addition to providing us with a comprehensive technology solution, they also delivered a custom change management plan."
THE CHALLENGE
In 2021, Alex Balagour joined C&N as Chief Information Officer with the goal of identifying technology initiatives that would accelerate the organization’s organic growth without requiring a proportional increase in headcount. Realizing that their existing manual processes would not scale with anticipated growth, C&N turned to technology to enhance both their employee and customer experiences.
According to Balagour, the Salesforce platform was the obvious choice for C&N given his prior experience at regional banking organizations. He viewed it as a strategic investment that could position C&N as a technology-focused financial institution, differentiating it from competitors. However, the more challenging question was determining which use case to address first.
After thorough analysis of the data and anticipated return on investment, C&N prioritized case management, followed by a CRM implementation. The team believed that by initially gathering metadata around case management, they could subsequently identify processes to automate. This approach would not only enhance efficiency across the organization but also create a more personalized and relevant experience for each customer.
Balagour added, “While we’re known for our community involvement and personal relationships with customers, internally, we struggled to answer questions like, ‘How many customer requests of this type did we receive last month?’ unless we manually counted emails or phone logs.”
Despite having an in-house Salesforce and data and analytics (D&A) team, C&N estimated that it would take them over two years of development work to fully realize their multi-phased technology vision. Consequently, C&N sought a partner who could act as an accelerator, possessing the necessary technical expertise, banking knowledge, and cultural alignment. Fortimize met these criteria and more.
SOLUTION
Together, the C&N and Fortimize teams implemented Financial Services Cloud to automate manual business processes and approvals, enabling back-office employees to more effectively support customer requests such as loan modifications, fee waivers, and debit and credit card changes. As a result, this also improved collaboration between the branches and operations teams.
By starting with case management, C&N could mandate its usage and adoption across the organization, cultivating a sea of champions for the platform and future CRM rollout. It didn’t take long for the sales team to recognize the value of this solution. Shortly thereafter, they began requesting features to support the sales process in the same place.
This led to C&N’s expansion of Financial Services Cloud with a Sales Cloud implementation to better track referrals, manage their sales pipeline, and view more consistent household information. Custom integrations with Encompass and C&N’s data warehouse provided employees with a 360° view of customer accounts and services, including new opportunities. This streamlined sales process improved visibility into business performance and customer onboarding activities.
Balagour noted, “From day one, I felt a strong commitment from the Fortimize team to ensure this entire project would be completed on time and within budget. In addition to providing us with a comprehensive technology solution, they also delivered a custom change management plan.”
OUTCOMES
Eighteen months later, the size of the combined technology, operations, and loan servicing teams at C&N remains unchanged, even as the organization’s assets under management have grown. C&N has achieved remarkable progress, doubling their monthly processed cases from 1,600 to 3,200, and improving their SLA approval times by 4%. Additionally, they have expanded their case types from 25 to 33, leveraging the technical foundation Fortimize established. This empowers C&N to rapidly adapt and respond to changes in their operations.
With these notable achievements in a relatively short time span, C&N’s Salesforce and D&A teams have identified further opportunities for improvement. They have expanded their case management solution to incorporate a “gig marketplace”, enabling retail branch employees to offer case management assistance when they aren’t helping customers. This initiative has already accounted for 10% of all cases in C&N’s queue and is currently under evaluation for future expansion as a tool to enhance organizational resiliency and capacity flexibility.
Balagour added, “One of the case types pertains to pricing exceptions on deposit accounts. We retained over $182 million in deposits, demonstrating the strength of our relationship model supported by modern technology.”
Regarding C&N’s future plans, Balagour is closely monitoring artificial intelligence (AI) and expanding data and analytics capabilities. They have recently developed a predictive model that utilizes over 30 data inputs to identify when a consumer or commercial customer is likely to close a deposit account.
Balagour elaborated, stating, “Retaining a customer is exponentially less expensive than developing a new one, thus we’re currently evaluating the efficacy of these models to determine whether our interventions in a customer’s decision to leave can yield a positive impact.”
