Janalakshmi Improves Core Operations for Microfinance Business in Salesforce CRM

Full Case Study

Janalakshmi, primary player in the microfinance services market for India approached specialist salesforce.com consultancy Wipro Limited for a solution to its problem of effectively managing large volumes of customer information in 2008.

Established in 2006, Janalakshmi caters to the under-serviced urban market, or those normally outside the scope of financial services, offering its customers a broad range of services including loans, savings, insurance and pensions.

Rapid growth in the early years gave rise to a requirement for a highly manageable solution for tracking collections, which was becoming a pain area. With everyone in agreement that the company needed to streamline its core business processes, the search for a CRM system began and Wipro was quickly engaged to provide a solution.

Urgent requirement to track and manage growing data volumes
The primary objectives were to streamline the process of capturing new customer leads, provide easy access to loan documentation, track collections and analyse account status, and manage all customer data effectively.

Faced with the technical challenges of integrating its existing applications into the chosen CRM solution, Janalakshmi opted for salesforce.com’s cloud CRM system on the strength of its ability to provide a centralised, cohesive view of each customer account via a single web interface. Wipro Limited, a major provider of system integration and outsourcing services in the Indian market, was engaged to carry out the implementation.

Other critical factors for Janalakshmi were that the CRM should provide a unified workflow infrastructure capable of supporting its current products as well as any it might add in the future. And, that it would also support advanced tracking and analytical reporting. Salesforce CRM ticked all the boxes.

Creating a customised solution within Salesforce CRM’s highly flexible architecture
A phased approach plan was developed for integration; during Phase One Wipro uploaded the data from Janalakshmi’s core banking system into Salesforce CRM and implemented automation processes to update recoveries and keep track of escalations. The collections data from all the branches across India was consolidated and loaded into salesforce.com. The system was configured to assign collections to Collection Executives across the country and automatically escalate cases where delays in collection occur, based upon a set of business rules.

Phase Two focused on streamlining the microfinance service provider’s business process flows, from the capture of customer acquisitions, to processing loan applications and providing the right documentation. This phase enabled the company to bring in new business, such as integration with smartcard applications, for example – smartcard data is now periodically consolidated and fed into Salesforce CRM.

Additionally, customer information sheets and loan applications from branches are manually entered into Salesforce CRM, where they are validated to ensure they meet basic quality requirements. Workflow rules ensure applications only proceed within Salesforce CRM once validations are completed and approvals gained.

Salesforce CRM is configured to provide different levels of data visibility to the various user groups so that each group has access to exactly the information they require to carry out their job.

Wipro also added to the standard functionality of Salesforce CRM by building in the ability to capture group loans information - specific loan forms for each type of loan have been created within the system.

A new proactive approach to reporting and analysis
A key requirement for Janalakshmi from the start was to have the ability to carry out in-depth reporting and data analysis. Using Salesforce.com reporting templates, Wipro has established a set of standard zone and area collection reports, which are run monthly by collection executives. Head office is able to easily drill down deeper into collection data and extract information by product, allowing them to monitor the performance of each product and make business decisions based upon those insights.

The microfinance provider now also has clear dashboards views of planned versus actual collections by zone through dashboards, which equips managers with the ability to intervene early in critical zones and implement steps to rectify problem areas.

Similarly, dashboards provide up-to-the-minute reporting by collection executive, daily activities, targets and actuals. The system also caters for mass collections, which were not previously possible, resulting in an increase in collection executives’ overall productivity.

The powerful analytical capabilities of Salesforce CRM open up new opportunities
Shortly after rollout Janalakshmi started to experience significant improvements in the business, including increased visibility of customer data and a far smoother loan collection process, all as a direct result of regular information updates and improved tracking of recoveries.

Furthermore, the granular visibility that Salesforce CRM provides into individual employee’s efforts and performance by region has opened up new possibilities for making improvements to the business, identifying new sales opportunities and recognising opportunities for cross selling.

Janalakshmi Financial Services Pvt. Ltd