RBC Royal Bank Cross Channel Data Management

Any financial institution knows that the competition in the credit card market is fierce. Banks and credit card issuers have proliferated the market with credit cards offering a varied set of features including insurance products, interest rate differentiation, and reward programs. In response, cardholders expect rewards that are commensurate with their preferences and level of loyalty. In this environment, the ability to recognize, communicate, and incent cardholders with relevant offers becomes a significant competitive advantage.

Like all credit card issuers, RBC Royal Bank, one of Canada's largest banks, operates in a very demanding business environment. With Visa transactions being processed 24/7, an opportunity exists every minute of every day to recognize the cardholder and their value. Since customer interaction usually lasts just a matter of seconds and takes place over a technically diverse point-of-sale network, leveraging this opportunity is a significant challenge.

RBC Royal Bank uses Ernex's Loyalty Database Hosting services (LDH) for back-end loyalty data management in order to provide a central view of the customers and to unify marketing and service interactions, including cross selling and up-selling, and customized service.

RBC uses the full suite of Ernex's packaged LDH solution including loyalty transaction processing, data management, web application portal, data warehouse, system interfaces, and analytical reporting services.

RBC call center staff and channel partners are now able to log in through the web application portal to provide cardholders with vital information regarding point balances, transaction history, or to perform accumulation and redemption transactions. Orders are entered via the web application Order Capture module, which is integrated with each of RBC's fulfillment partner systems.

RBC has outsourced all of their reward-based Visa card programs to Ernex , processing billions of reward points per year. By outsourcing program management operations and analytical reporting to Ernex , RBC is able to focus its time and resources on strategically leveraging this creative technology and partnership to add program and shareholder value while increasing customer satisfaction.

"RBC Royal Bank has experienced significant savings and operational efficiencies since migrating our loyalty card databases to Ernex's real-time system. The flexibility and reliability of Ernex's solution now enables us to focus on the strategic marketing decisions around our card products."

Business Impact for RBC Royal Bank Includes:

• Lowered attrition. Successful retention tool
• Encouraged re-activation of inactive accounts
• Increased response rates for marketing campaigns
• Reduced operating and management costs
• Reduced traffic on call center volume, FTEs, and long-term telephony capital investments
• Improved turnaround time for reward fulfillment
• Provided standard technology platform and IP interfaces for 3rd-party systems
• Provided easier and faster integration for future e-commerce applications