“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Leave it to philosopher Confucius to nail it with that sage advice. There really is no need to complicate matters more than is necessary.
You probably see complications arise in life on a daily basis, especially at work, that could be simplified. Projects are often over-complicated by bringing in more people, changing direction, or altering resources.
For the banking and lending industry, mergers and acquisitions can lead to elevated levels of complication. There is uncertainty in the air as employees worry about forthcoming changes related to redundancy or leadership. Teams, cultures, and benefits can all be impacted as the company transforms.
But there are ways that banks and lenders can manage these changes and reduce complications. With the Salesforce platform, it is possible to have a smooth merger or acquisition and blend two entities for a better future together.
Mergers and acquisitions are on the rise
Merger and acquisition activity across financial services, including banking, capital markets, and insurance, reached a new high in 2021. The deal value soared 106% to $1.1 trillion from $557.8 billion in 2020.
Financial services mergers and acquisitions are expected to continue growing in 2022, and in KPMG’s annual survey of M&A sentiment, 75% of financial services C-suite respondents said their appetite for deal making had risen since before the pandemic.
Take, for example, Vermont’s biggest credit unions, which recently made plans to merge. The Vermont State Employees Credit Union is merging with New England Federal Credit Union because they need to get bigger to compete with the larger banks that exist or are moving into the Vermont market. As these mergers become more and more common, there’s increased demand for technology that can effectively bring separate organizations together.
The convergence of data
At most banks and lenders, only a few people within the organization have a heads up that the merger or acquisition is happening, although there is usually chatter happening around it. Business tends to slow down with major decisions paused before ramping up again around the reveal.
The merger or acquisition affects other departments beyond the bank’s core business. Marketing and PR are communicating the new company to customers and clients. Human resources is managing the cultural and benefits aspects of the transition. Teams and leadership are changing as they are either blended or laid off.
At Silverline, one of the most significant friction points we see when two banks intersect is around data conversion. Massive amounts of data must be evaluated, stored, migrated, and centralized — all while staying legally compliant.
The many logistics around data need to be managed through multiple tools. A tool like Salesforce gives you the flexibility and speed to sort all that data. It removes the silos of data across the two entities and centralizes it into one system. The system optimizes the data to support the data integration and data cleanliness needed for organizations to come together.
Making repetitive workstreams less complicated
Think of Salesforce as more than just a CRM tool. It can also be a tool applicable for human resources, marketing, or other business units critical to a transition. The number one area that Salesforce shines is as a workstream tool. Salesforce can take the repeatable processes at the base of workstreams and make them automated, efficient, and much less complicated.
These are four workstreams that Salesforce can support before, during, and after a merger or acquisition:
- Onboarding: Team members who manage and sell banking products need to get acquainted with the functionality of new services or features that are being added due to the merger or acquisition. Using Salesforce for onboarding helps teams get up to speed quickly so they can continue business as usual. The tool can be leveraged to assign and track onboarding activities by using automated flows and templates that can be customized based on roles.
- Communication: During a merger or acquisition, there is a lot of information to share internally among teams and externally with clients. It is necessary to have full transparency with all client communications, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps with these outreach efforts. Team members can document client emails and phone calls and set a proactive cadence for follow-ups. Salesforce provides visibility across the team, so everyone knows the status of clients over the course of the transition and beyond.
- Collaboration: Combining workspaces will always be a top concern in mergers and acquisitions, and Slack makes it easy to bring employees together in a shared digital headquarters. Teams that use Slack are 49% more productive, and Slack Enterprise Grid enables large-scale collaboration and alignment with support for up to 500,000 users across an unlimited number of designated workspaces. Companies can streamline administration with centralized controls and customizable policies, and Slack’s security features protect data while offering governance and risk-management capabilities flexible enough to meet the organization’s needs.
- Service centers: A bank or lender’s service center may be the first point of contact for customers looking for information or answers about a merger or acquisition. There will most likely be a spike in call volume, and by having the right workstream tools, your service center team can smoothly manage the influx. With Salesforce Service Cloud, service center agents gain a unified view of every customer that calls to quickly find a resolution to any issue.
How Silverline helps simplify mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions can undoubtedly be complicated times for financial organizations. But having a tool like Salesforce can help ease the burden of the transition by automating routine processes and streamlining workflows. Silverline provides the Salesforce roadmap to help you confidently navigate through a merger or acquisition. Find out how our team of experts can ease the transition.