UK’s most trusted financial brand trusts Microsoft Dynamics 365

A vital part of Nationwide strategy

The business savings team at Nationwide plays an important role for the building society. With its constant focus on delivering the best value for its members, the society looks to business savings as an important and cost-effective way to finance consumer lending products. The activity of the business savings team is, therefore, highly responsive to business need. 

Nationwide’s response to COVID-19 is focused on mutual support; helping members, staff and other stakeholders to navigate through the crisis. The society’s commitments to mortgage payment holidays, interest-free periods for other borrowing, swift supplier payments and to protect jobs mean the business savings team has an important role to play in assuring they continue to attract business deposits.

Anthony Pooley explains, “Like many businesses, we are being asked to do more with less. Choosing Microsoft Relationship Sales with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator has made this possible. It gives our team scalability for the ultimate benefit of our members, and our business savings customers directly.”

A superb rollout

The business savings team at Nationwide was formed in 2012 and, at that time, began using Microsoft Excel to manage customer contacts. However, this proved unsustainable. Reporting was difficult and the team needed a customer relationship management (CRM) system that would provide a holistic view of the customer. This led them to Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Working closely with Microsoft, Anthony Pooley gained skills and knowledge as a champion who would cascade best practice to the rest of the team. He says, “The support from Microsoft was superb. The close relationship helped to develop our ideas and our use of Dynamics 365, optimising screens and fleshing out workflows. We’ve only finished phase one, really; getting it embedded. And we’re already thinking about the next steps.”

Creating new efficiencies

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is now used to manage the whole lifecycle of a customer account from sales, through account opening to customer care. All activities are captured on the timeline and can be easily reviewed and reported on. 

“It’s much easier to check in with clients and keep them up to date with key product and service changes,” says Anthony Pooley. "We're spending less time on admin tasks which gives us the capacity to spend more time on value added activities which our clients appreciate. We now have a wealth of information at our fingertips."

The team is now empowered to self-serve information and can see exactly how each workflow is progressing. For example, onboarding a new account can take three to five days. The new workflow management capability has given the Relationship Managers the ability to keep track of account opening cases and ensure a smooth onboarding experience so the vital first impression exceeds expectations.

As well as aiding productivity, this creates a much more seamless experience for members. Even if a corporate client’s customer relationship manager is away or on holiday, any other member of the team can deal with the query successfully with detailed and immediate access to all relevant information.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Sales prospecting is much improved too. Nationwide chose to use existing native integrations between the two Microsoft products, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This gives relationship managers fast access to additional layers of information and insights. They can quickly see how big an opportunity is, who they should target, the topics of interest to them and even recommended icebreakers, all within Microsoft Dynamics.

Anthony Pooley says, “LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it easy to take a much more bespoke approach for each contact. We can make our communications much more meaningful to each prospect. We can send InMail direct from Dynamics 365. Then we use the timeline feature to set follow-up tasks.”

Improved marketing insights

Interest rate changes during the pandemic have meant that communications with clients have needed to be more frequent during this period. Each customer Relationship Manager cares for 80 to 120 client accounts, so being able to quickly pull off contact information to create mail merges about new product launches or virtual events using Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been a huge timesaver.

“Without Dynamics 365 we couldn’t do it,” says Anthony Pooley. “Members are going through a tough time at the moment and we want to support them as much as possible. People have really appreciated receiving a call to say ‘by the way, the rate is going lower but we have this product instead’ because we’re making their jobs easier.”

The improved information flow works both ways. Customer feedback can be captured more easily. Dashboards and reports make it easy to share customer comments, market intelligence and competitor information with senior managers. In this way, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 rollout both reflects and showcases the larger digital transformation underway at Nationwide.

Digital transformation

In recent years, the building society has invested strategically in its technology infrastructure. As more members use digital banking services, Nationwide’s ambitions go beyond leading in online financial services. It wants to exceed customer expectations when compared to the very best digital customer experiences across industry.

“As a mutual, our core purpose enables us to take long term decisions which are in the best interest of current and future members,” explains Gary Delooze, Chief Information Office at Nationwide Building Society. “Despite challenging economic conditions in recent years, the Society has continued to invest in its technology infrastructure in order to simplify our systems, increase resilience and build new capabilities. These developments now provide us with more flexibility, allowing us to adapt to our members needs and launch new products and services in a timely manner.”

The way the business savings team is using Microsoft Dynamics 365 aligns with this vision. New insights the business savings team captures will help to shape new products and services for members.

“When we have conversations with large corporates, we often get informed of competitor rates and features,” offers Anthony Pooley as an example. “Now we can capture those insights in a way that is shared with the business and that helps prioritise product development.”

The future

The business savings team is now looking for ways to develop its use of Microsoft Dynamics 365. Power BI is potentially planned to further enhance reporting. Integrating the Internal Ledger and onboarding the operations teams are high up on the wish list. 

This will help to streamline workflows still further by giving support staff access to all the information the customer relationship managers have at their fingertips. It will extend visibility of workflows and, for example, help streamline customer onboarding. Boosting the team’s productivity directly enhances the experience of corporate clients and will, ultimately, benefit all members.

“Business savings is not something Nationwide is known for,” admits Anthony Pooley, “but what Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives us is scalability. It will make it easier for the team to grow in the future as we raise awareness of our brand in this space.”

Discover how the banking industry is redefining success in the new world of work