DSpace at VNU: STRATEGIC PLAN FOR APPLYING CRM IN VPBANK LE THI THANH TAM

Furthermore, when Vietnam becomes member of the World Trade Organization, Joint Stock Banks will face increasingly competitive pressure by foreign banks that have much more high power of

STRATEGIC PLAN FOR APPLYING CRM IN VPBANK

LE THI THANH TAM

Hanoi School of Business Supervisors: Dr Nguyen Ngoc Anh Meghnad Shetty, MBA

February 2007, 80 pages

I NTRODUCTION

1 Necessity of the thesis

Joint Stock banks (JSBs) systems in Vietnam are significantly competing with State-owned banks (SOBs) system Because of being result of opening the economy as well as characteristics of economy system, JSBs are controlled by Central Bank much more tight than SOBs Besides that, set

up after SOBs they are really weak in infrastructure, competitive capacities and supported policies Furthermore, when Vietnam becomes member of the World Trade Organization, Joint Stock Banks will face increasingly competitive pressure by foreign banks that have much more high power of finance and technology

Vietnam joint stock commercial bank for private enterprises (VPBank) is one of JSBs operating in Vietnam banking market It is entirely difficult for VPBank to compete with SOBs However, VPBank is opposing increasing competition of Joint Stock competitors in order to exist and development

Moreover, I have been working in VPBank, one of the first Joint Stock banks in Vietnam, as an officer for nearly three years

2 Objectives of the thesis

Based on defining difficulties of VPBank in terms of competing with not only other non-state banks but also state-owned banks, the research will significantly find out a relevant competitive strategy for

VPBank in the period from 2006 to 2010 and answer Why VPBank should apply CRM as a competitive tool

To get the general objective the research thesis will take detail objectives: i) examining main effects

of external and internal environment on VPBank’s operation; ii) finding a relevant competitive strategy for VPBank in next five-year period and the relationship between VPBank new competitive strategy and CRM; and iii) how to apply CRM at VPBank

Questions

To achieve these objectives above, the dissertation will answer three key questions follow:

1) What factors have significantly affected operations of VPBank?

2) What will be competitive strategy for VPBank in 2006 – 2010 and the relationship between the new strategy and CRM?

3) How to apply CRM solution?

3 Methodology

To find a relevant strategy for VPBank, the thesis will analyze competitive advantages based on analyzing SWOT and value chain

Data is definitely collected from secondary data source They are government’s reports, Central Bank’s annual reports, legal documents related to banking system, VPBank’s Annual reports, VPBank’s surveys and banking articles Besides that, the research uses data collected from other Joint Stock Banks and State-owned Banks

The research also uses comparison and contrast methods in order to answer the research questions

4 Structure of the thesis

To regard to the research topic, the research is clearly divided into three chapters including:

Chapter 1: Literature Review

Chapter 2: Background on Vietnam banking market and VPBank situation analysis

Chapter 3: Recommendation on competitive Strategy of VPBank in 2006-2010, and how to apply CRM solution as a competitive tool

C HAPTER 1: T HEORICAL FRAMEWORK

1.1 The definition of customer relationship management (CRM):

1.1.1 Definition of customer relationship management:

There is no universal explanation of what CRM is, since the area is fairly new and still is developing

It is therefore important to remember that several attempts of defining CRM exist and that many companies adapt the definition to their own business and their unique needs The following quotations are three examples of how CRM is defined:

“CRM is a new customer-centric business model that reorients firm operations around customer needs (as opposed to products, resources, or processes) in order to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention”

“CRM is the integration of customer focus in marketing, sale, production, logistics and accounting, i.e in all parts of the company’s operations and structure”

“The activities a business performs to identify, qualify, acquire, develop and retain increasingly loyal and profitable customer by delivering the right product or service, to the right customer, through the right channel, at the right time and the right cost CRM integrates sales, marketing, service, and enterprise resource planning and supply-chain management functions through business process automation, technology solutions, and information resources to maximize each customer contract CRM facilitates relationships among enterprises, their customers, business partners, suppliers, and employees”

1.1.2 Comparison between relationship and transactional marketing:

The transactional marketing focuses on the capability of taking over new customers, attracting the potential customers from competitors while relationship marketing focuses on the capability of

protecting the market share in the market, keeping close relationship with the current customers, cross-selling and up-selling

1.2 The principle of CRM

The principle of CRM is that all customers are not the right customers, so in CRM each customer group will be treated in the different ways

The remaining customers represent potential relationship buyers They can be divided into three district segments:

- Those who are significantly the most profitable;

- Those who are delivering good profit and suggest the capability of becoming top profit customers;

- Those who are only marginally profitable

 The first group of buyers: Those customers who represent 10% of the company’s business and are the most profitable should be the first to be targeted for CRM The purpose of the CRM efforts will be retention Even although it may be difficult to make these customers more profitable, CRM should help assure that none of them are lost to the competition

 The middle group of buyers: The balance of the customers in top 40% or 50% as ranked by sales and profit It will be just as important to target this middle group of buyers who are delivering good profit but may be capable of moving up to the top of profit level Customers

in this group are probably giving some of their business to your competitors CRM activities for these customers should be aimed directly at increasing your company’s share of their business CRM marketing strategy developed for this middle group of buyer more than paid for the company’s significant investment in database software within a year

 The final, less profitable, group of customers: The third group of customers represents those who, while profitable, are only marginally so While it is possible that some in this group would move up the sales ladder as a result of increased communications, it will probably not

be worth the effort Typically, this group will represent almost half of the customer file Hence this simple analysis has greatly reduced the size of the challenge of implementing CRM

1.3 The element of CRM:

CRM consist of three elements: People, Process and Technology, that help companies to understand their customers To gain the success in CRM project, the company must coordinate all aspects Technology must be given a 20% weight, while people and business process should be 50% and 30% respectively

1.4 The characteristics and the challenges of CRM:

1.4.1 The characteristics of CRM:

 Customer database centrally: Give to the company a overall view of relationship of each customer

 Profitability of customer analysis: CRM helps to create the balance sheet of individual customer, and helps the company to invest more effectively on each customer, the profitability is the most important thing to evaluate and classify customers Normally, each company has three classes of customers:

- The first class: Take about 10% of total customers, this class makes the highest profit and has long-term transactions with the company

- The middle class: Take about 40%-50% of total customers, this class makes profit and is very potential

- The last class: Also take about 40%-50% of total customers, the profit of this class is not high and mainly is the current customers who have few transactions or only come to the company

in some special occasions like sale-off, discount

 Customer segmentation: CRM classifies customers into different segmentations and measures the effectiveness of each segmentation

 Marketing campaigns base on customer database: Use the database and information of each segmentation to plan and implement marketing campaigns

 Analysis of customer’s needs: Help to give personalized product or service to each customer and find more new and potential needs from customers to compete with competitors

1.4.2 The challenges of CRM:

 Have to change the policies and process in the whole

 Need full support from the board of management and all staffs, for example: the way they import the customer information to CRM system and dig this database

 Need large initial cost to invest on software, machine, equipment and human resource

1.5 Ideas support CRM:

1.5.1 The statistics of Harvard-Business review in December, 1995:

- Only 4% of dissatisfying customers complain, the other say nothing but they will come to your competitors In the banking industry, 65% of customer will chose other suppliers if they are not satisfied

- The average person with a problem eventually tells nine other people

- Satisfied customers tell 5 other people about their good treatment

- The cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 to 7 times greater than retaining current ones

- The cost of recruitment a new employee is 10 times greater than retaining current ones

1.5.2 Pareto's Principle - The 80-20 Rule:

The 80/20 Rule means that in anything a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are trivial In Pareto's case it meant 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth In Juran's initial work he identified 20 percent of the defects causing 80 percent of the problems

Project Managers know that 20 percent of the work (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) consumes 80 percent of your time and resources

C HAPTER 2: B ACKGROUND ON V IETNAM B ANKING MARKET AND VP BANK SITUATION ANALYSIS

2.1 Overview of Vietnam Banking Market

State Commercial Bank: There are 6 banks of this type now running their business These banks own

a large system of branches that can join Inter-bank independently or dependently owing to its policy and management capacity or they can choose not to join Inter-bank market

Joint-Stock Commercial Bank system consists of 37 members It is now seeing a decline in number but an increase in scale for each member

Joint-Venture Bank, foreign bank branches: 4 Joint-Venture Banks and 27 foreign bank branches are

in operation in Vietnam Their customers are mainly foreign financial groups or joint-venture companies Several banks of this kind such as City-bank or Standard & Chartered Banks have been offering services in Inter-bank, though still humble

Financial companies: 5 financial companies that seem unable to afford big business due to shortage

of long-term capital want to switch to Inter-bank market Most of these companies lack of banking tools These banks offer services mainly in sending and lending money, bond transactions, and moneyed papers

2.2 Situation of VPbank

2.2.1 Vision

Up to 2010, VPbank will become the first-ranked commercial bank in the northern of Vietnam in the credit service; especially installment consuming loans and VPBank difference is created by effective customer relationship management

2.2.2 SWOT Analysis

 Strength:

- Firstly, Vpbank has the quick growth rate in mobilizing funds, especially in savings You can see the total mobilized funds in the period 2001-2004, as below:

Total customer’s deposits in the period 2001-2004

Unit : Mil VND

Customer’s deposits 974,632 1,273,993 30.72% 1,869,589 46.75%

* Savings account 797,116 1,032,513 29.53% 1,541,341 49.28%

* Current account 134,697 210,371 56.18% 283,198 34.62%

So, the growth rate in mobilizing fund is quick, it is because VPBank always offers the attractive mobilized interest rate, as compared with other Vietnam commercial banks and VPbank often provides many promotion programs or advertisements The customer’s deposits come from 30.7% to 46.7% during the two years 2003-2004, including that savings take the most percentage

0.47

0.40

0.24

0.76

0.33

VPbank ACB Exim Techcombank Saigon Cong Thuong

Mobilizing fund growth rates in 2003-2004

Source: VPBank, ACB, Eximbank, Techcombank, Saigon Cong Thuong bank’s anual reports

2003-2004

- Secondly, VPBank has a young and skillful human resource The graduated and upper graduated employees take 74% of total employees, and two-third is the new comers Of course, it says nothing, the most important thing is the capability of adapting with the new environment, processing the task but the youth will bring the fresh environment and be more active and creative

- Thirdly, the NPLs rate over the total loan balance in VPBank is low at the current time After VPbank was in Hanoi state bank’s special control with the NPLs rate 37% (2001), this current rate is only 0.5% (2004) The number can say that VPbank are operating very safely

- Forthly, VPBank has the strong relationship in the inter-bank market It helps VPBank increase the profit that comes from the inter-bank market investments, securities trading…At the current time, these activities are mainly feeding all VPBank system

 Weakness:

- Firstly, sparse experienced managers and staffs, insufficient pool of good staff for expansion

- Secondly, management and control still a distance from good banking practices

- Thirdly, lower reputation compared to leading competitors

- Fourthly, small and high risks customer base

- Fifthly, varying service quality, small range of products and services

- Sixthly, VPBank weak point is the information technology system, the software that VPBank is

applying is not very useful anymore because the demand of customers is developing; they want to buy modern bank services While other competitors have finished the modernizing-bank project, VPBank still use B2K With new application software, the competitors can deploy some new services that attract customers like mobile-banking, home-banking…Although these services are

not popular with the medium and low income customers now, they promote brand names for VPBank’s competitors

 Opportunity:

- Firstly, it is the high entry for the new comer In fact, to open a new one, the legal regulations are required so complexly Moreover, the state bank’s guideline is to build the really strong commercial banks to compete with the foreign ones, they do encourage opening more new small banks With VPBank, the domestic competitors do not arise but it is easy to appear the merge and acquisition trend in the future The competitors are the current domestic banks, foreign banks, and the financial companies that provide the same services such as insurance company, post office savings, and securities exchange…

- Secondly, Vietnam government are maintaining the market economy, so in the future the growth rate of Vietnam economy goes up stably and firmly This environment encourages the private economy sector to develop; this is also the target market of other retail banks and VPBank

- Thirdly, the habit of Vietnamese people is changing day by day, the new generation has newer thinking, newer habit The intellectual has the high and stable income; they want to be independent with their parents when they are still young It will increase the demand of instalment loans for purchasing car, house… Besides, Vietnamese people are turning into using non-cash payment, they will use plastic and chip payment cards like ATM, Credits card…This is the big opportunities for banks including VPbank

- Fourthly, the banking industry has the potential development trend and high profitability, at this time the stocks of commercial banks are so attractive in the investors’ eyes This opportunity still offer to other bank like VPBank, they still keep investors’ belief because Vietnam commercial banks’ strategies are to develop stably and firmly and to reduce the risk as much as possible

 Threat:

- Firstly, SOCB reform resulting in SOCB’s targeting SME segment