Fortis ICS

How Fortis gained credit with its customers

Fortis International Card Services is a credit card company that focuses on revolving credit. Fortis ICS is the market leader in the Netherlands.

The Dutch credit card market is becoming overly crowded and competitive. Fortis ICS (International Card Services) consequently needed to find a way to create growth within its existing customer base. This meant it had to become a more customer-focused organization and increase the value of and for each client over time.

IBM Global Business Services has a long-standing relationship with Fortis ICS and has been involved in many of the major changes that Fortis ICS has undergone through the years. One of our essential projects was the creation of a 'Data Warehouse' that processes customer and transaction information. This enables Fortis ICS to calculate the value per customer.

To further increase the customer value, the client wanted to make better use of existing customer information within the marketing and services processes. In order to achieve this, we assessed the marketing and sales organization according to four dimensions: strategy, processes, data systems and organizational culture.

We then outlined a practical roadmap how to get from the current to the desired state, by making incremental steps.

Finally, we helped Fortis ICS to implement the roadmap and achieve its goals.

As a result of the assessment, the commercial department of Fortis ICS has been reorganized to better integrate quantitative analysis into their campaign processes. Fortis ICS is now able to use customer information more effectively.

This project involved a multi-disciplinary and joint ICS-IBM team. On the IBM side, the following persons participated to the team in different phases of the project:

Our Client Engagement Manager was responsible for managing the ambitions and expectations of the client over the short and long term. The FS Business Consultant assessed the company's maturity level from a business perspective and outlined key points of progress on a roadmap. The Program Manager developed that roadmap and monitored progress on the entire project. A CRM Strategist assessed the organization's needs from a CRM perspective. The Enterprise CRM Architect then designed a future-proof CRM architecture. Our Business Intelligence Consultant added an assessment from an Analytical CRM perspective (ACRM). The CRM Specialist implemented the necessary CRM components. Finally a Business Intelligence Specialist implemented the ACRM components.