Benefits of CRM System in Macquarie Group: Research Proposal

This research proposal focuses on the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system within Macquarie Group, a financial and banking organization. The study aims to address the inefficiencies of the current manual business processes, such as data duplication, reduced customer service, and time-consuming operations. The proposal identifies gaps in the manual process and justifies the adoption of a CRM system to improve customer satisfaction, increase productivity, and enhance profitability. It includes a cost-benefit analysis to assess the project's economic feasibility and explores system analysis and design aspects. The research also covers system development, testing, implementation, and post-implementation activities, along with project, risk, and change management considerations. Ultimately, the study seeks to demonstrate how a CRM system can support Macquarie Group's strategic goals and improve its overall operational efficiency.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Assignment 2: Research Proposal- Benefits of implementing Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) system in Business process of Macquarie Group
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Cover letter to sponsor
To
Commonwealth Bank
Sugarbird Lady Rd, Perth Airport WA 6105, Australia
Date: 8th January, 2018
Subject: Request to give fund for implementation of CRM system in business process of
Macquarie Group
Respected Sir,
Macquarie Group is a financial and banking organization aims to implement of CRM system as
we have identified some issues into the manual business process of our organization. Due to our
manual process, we have faced issues of loss of customer and therefore our productivity is also
reduced. The CRM system helps our financial service to gain more productivity and profitability
by attracting more customers. We have provided cost benefit analysis to analyze if the project
will provide benefit or loss of our organization. In order to implement the proposed system, we
require some fund of $5 million. If you are interested to become sponsor for our company, please
contact us as soon as possible.
Thanking you,
Helen Anthony
Project Manager, Macquarie Group

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Executive Summary
Customer relationship management (CRM) system becomes an inevitable growth, productivity
and profitability into the banking sector by the rise into a competition, advancement of
technology and demand of customers. The selected organization for this research study is
"Macquarie Group" which proposes to change its manual banking operations into automated
operations by an implementation of CRM system to answer customer's queries. Macquarie
Group utilizes to develop of CRM for customer's profitability, organizational productivity and
gain of lifetime value. Development of CRM practices is adopted to understand the customer for
their product development, proper target, maintenance of profitability and better mutual
relationships with the customers. Due to gaps in the manual process of Macquarie Group, the
banking industry decides to propose a CRM system to improve their customer satisfaction level.
The queries of a customer are difficult to respond as information is stored in various places;
therefore there is the reduction of customer services. In Macquarie Group, CRM should benefit
to improve productivity, an increase of the share of wallet, consolidation of customer's
information and removal of operational efficiency. The paper investigates the system analysis
and design for successful implementation of CRM system into the selected organization. An
attempt is also made to analyze the gaps in the manual process of Macquarie Group and benefits
of CRM system into the bank's internal and external operations. Cost-benefit analysis is also
done to observe if the project is economically feasible or not. Risks, as well as changes, are
identified to overcome any huge effects on the research study.

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................5
1.1 Background of the study........................................................................................................5
1.2 Aim and objectives of the study............................................................................................5
2.0 Description of organizational context-Macquarie Group..........................................................6
3.0 Discussion of internal and external operating environments.....................................................6
4.0 Identification of problem statement for IS/IT............................................................................7
5.0 Justification of choice of proposed system................................................................................7
5.1 Identification of gaps of manual process into operational process of Macquarie Group......7
5.2 Cost-benefit analysis and feasibility study............................................................................9
5.3 CRM system supports the strategic goals of Macquarie Group..........................................11
6.0 System analysis and system design for intended system.........................................................14
7.0 Explanation of system development, testing and implementation..........................................15
7.1 System Development...........................................................................................................15
7.2 System Testing.....................................................................................................................16
7.3 System Implementation.......................................................................................................16
8.0 Post implementation activities.................................................................................................18
9.0 Project management, risk management and change management associated with
implementation..............................................................................................................................18
10.0 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................20

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References......................................................................................................................................21
Appendix........................................................................................................................................25
1. Background of the organization- Macquarie Group..............................................................25

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1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
The study is based on improving the current business process of selected organization,
Macquarie Group by an implementation of CRM system. The current business process of
Macquarie Group is such that the sales team handles the customer's transactions manually. There
is a high volume of payment processing in the bank which is done in paper forms. Therefore the
challenges that the business faces are a duplication of customer's data, dropped handoff and error
into entering of the data manually. This study is undertaken to propose the company for
implementing CRM system into their operations for bringing automation. The bank should use
CRM tool to acquire of more customers and improve the relationship between the organization
and customer (Khodakarami and Chan 2014). Implementation of CRM system into the bank
should help to improve customer retention by customer feedback to provide of conveniences
such as ATM in addition to online banking. The banks should use of CRM tools to improve
customer loyalty by data collection throughout customer sign up, feedback along with
transactions. The CRM solution can speed up the marketing and sales activities and connect the
sales team and customers online. The sales team can access to existing customers data and
respond to their queries.
1.2 Aim and objectives of the study
This study aims to analyze the current business process of Macquarie Group and measure
the effectiveness of implementing of CRM system into the retail banking sector. This study aims
to better understand the requirements of the customers which allow assessing of information
about buying the history of the customers.

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The objectives of this research study are:
 To identify the gap of manual process in the operation process of Macquarie Group
 To suggest of improvement measures to enhance customer relationship in retail banking
 To explain the benefits of implementation of CRM system into business processes of
Macquarie Group
2.0 Description of organizational context-Macquarie Group
Macquarie Group is a financial group which is operating in Sydney, Australia that
provides their clients with asset management, capital solutions, finance, along with risk and
banking services. The organization aims to deliver of longer-term profitability, shareholder
returns and managing of risks for the corporate governance. The mission of Macquarie Group is
“To create wealth for our clients”. The vision of the selected organization is “Our products and
services will best in the market and consistently exceed the expectations of our clients”. The
business process of Macquarie Group consists of accounts opening and payment to optimize
cost. The organization provides financial solutions to their clients (Macquarie Group 2016). The
organization supports the staff in efforts to provide of financial assistance globally.
3.0 Discussion of internal and external operating environments
Macquarie Group provides of retail banking services to their customers, general public
such as loans, checking account balance, mortgages and deposits. In order to build a customer
base, the bank is focused on providing accessible services to the client. The internal banking
operations of Macquarie Group are opening of new accounts, transfer of money between
accounts and assist the customers to manage their deposits (Jeston and Nelis 2014). This

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particular research study is important to understand the implementation of CRM system for bank
productivity and profitability for efficient management of the banking internal and external
operations.
The external banking operations of Macquarie Group are those factors which are
operating outside of the company (Armstrong et al. 2015). The bank also supports trading and
market operations to other countries.
4.0 Identification of problem statement for IS/IT
The increase in competition in the banking industry in the years turns to make the
banking operations more complex. As most of the banks are performing undifferentiated services
with equal prices, therefore the customers are left with many options to go for getting better
services from another bank (Barney and Ray 2015). The manual operations of Macquarie Group
also provide some gap into their business process which affects the reputation of the bank. In
order to improve the business operations of a selected organization, the bankers are come out
with a customer-centric strategic decision such as CRM system. This system would provide such
a platform to the customers so that the bank can retain of existing customers and expand their
customer base by attracting extra customers.
5.0 Justification of choice of proposed system
5.1 Identification of gaps of manual process into operational process of Macquarie
Group
The current operational process of Macquarie Group is a manual transactional process.
Wynn et al. (2016) discussed that there is a higher degree of their manual process is costly as

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well as slow which leads to unpredictable results and higher error rate while entering of the data
into transaction database system. Peppard and Ward (2016) stated that the operational process of
the bank relies on both human resources along with paper-based. Following are the gaps in the
manual process of Macquarie Group:
Duplication of data entry: There is a duplication of data while the employees are
entering information into the files. Some of the entered data are redundant as there is no such
repetition check into the manual process (Peltonen 2015). Duplication of the data reduces the
record keeping process.
Staff training cost: The manual system puts pressure on people to correctly enter all the
details of the customers. With the manual process, the level of services is based on the
individuals, and it puts a requirement to provide training to the staffs to ensure that they are
followed correct procedures (Peppers and Rogers 2016). Training cost is required to train the
employees to handle their respective duty properly.
Reduction of customer services: The queries of a customer are difficult to respond as
information is stored in various places (Kale 2014). Therefore, there is a possibility to reduce the
customers when there are not satisfied with the business operations of the bank.
Time-consuming and expensive: Reporting as well as checking of the data is robust
which is timely and also expensive. It takes more time and effort to keep track the paper
documents and secure the information from being stolen. The data are accessed by only one
employee at one time (Gummesson 2015). Therefore, this is a time-consuming process which
leads the business to become unproductive.

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Lack of security: The data are stored in filing cabinets. Macquarie Group is not able to
prevent the employees from a review of sensitive data into paper-based work. Lack of security of
the personal information of customers allows the hackers to abuse of financial information
throughout fraud (Akgun et al. 2014). Any unauthorized users are access to the confidential
information.
Chang, Wong and Fang (2014) discussed that the IT solutions such an information
system could rescue the back office procedures from expense as well as data entry errors. By
taking advantage of CRM system, the banks are generating improvement in their productivity as
well as customer services by 50 percent.
5.2 Cost-benefit analysis and feasibility study
Cost Benefit Analysis:
Hardware $ 30,000.00
Software $ 1,000.00
Development team salaries $ 7,300.00
Training $ 1,700.00
Total Development Cost $ 40,000.00
Hardware $ 20,000.00
Software $ 500.00
Operational Labor $ 12,500.00
Total Operational Cost $ 33,000.00
Approximate salary savings $ 150,000.00
Reduced operating cost $ 30,000.00
Total Benefit $ 180,000.00
Discount Rate Used 5.00%

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Project Cost-Benefit Analysis
Analysis Variables:
Discount Rate Used 5.00%
Annual Benefits $ 180,000.00
Annual Operational Costs $ 33,000.00
One-Time Development Cost $ 40,000.00
Years of
project 0 1 2 3 4 5 TOTALS
Economic Benefit $0.00 $ 180,000.00 $ 180,000.00 $ 180,000.00 $ 180,000.00 $ 180,000.00
Discount Rate 1.0000 0.9524 0.9070 0.8638 0.8227 0.7835
PV of Benefits $0.00 $171,428.57 $163,265.31 $155,490.77 $148,086.45 $141,034.71
NPV of all BENEFITS $0.00 $ 171,428.57 $ 334,693.88 $ 490,184.65 $ 638,271.09 $ 779,305.80 $ 779,305.80
One-Time COSTS $(40,000.00)
Recurring Costs $0.00 $ (33,000.00) $ (33,000.00) $ (33,000.00) $ (33,000.00) $ (33,000.00)
Discount Rate 1.0000 0.9524 0.9070 0.8638 0.8227 0.7835
PV of Recurring Costs $0.00 $ (31,428.57) $ (29,931.97) $ (28,506.64) $ (27,149.18) $ (25,856.36)
NPV of all COSTS $(40,000.00) $ (71,428.57) $(101,360.54) $ (129,867.18) $ (157,016.37) $ (182,872.73) $ (182,872.73)
Overall NPV $ 596,433.07

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Overall ROI 3.2615