BMS Group Gains Insight into the Sales Pipeline for Global Business Growth
 
 

BMS Group Gains Insight into the Sales Pipeline for Global Business Growth

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BMS Group is a specialist insurance group that delivers reinsurance, wholesale, and direct-insurance services to clients in the United Kingdom, United States, and Europe. Founded in 1980, the company is the seventh-largest reinsurance broker in the world, with offices in London, Bermuda, and the United States.

BMS Group is growing rapidly and aims to double its size over the next four years. In the last 30 years, the organization has grown both organically and via acquisition. BMS Group has two managing, general-agent (MGA) subsidiaries—operating as wholesale insurance intermediaries—which are a core component of its growth strategy. The company has a balanced business portfolio with combined revenues of US$83 million, and it places more than US$1 billion annually into global reinsurance markets.

BMS Group lacked a centralized customer relationship management (CRM) system to streamline customer relations and facilitate growth. The company relied on a combination of disparate spreadsheets, with minor implementations of Salesforce.com. This approach lacked integration, and data collation was both manual and time-consuming for business development, sales professionals, and brokers to use.

BMS Group chose to work with Oracle Partner BPI OnDemand to implement Oracle CRM On Demand, an integrated customer relationship management system. BPI OnDemand tailored Oracle CRM On Demand to the company’s business requirements, and it created a simple, icon-based interface for access through mobile devices—such as iPads—to streamline customer management for a large, dispersed sales team. The interface, due to its ease of use, is now rolling out across all global teams.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from BMS Group

  • “With Oracle CRM On Demand, we have gained a very practical, simple, yet effective customer relationship management system. This integrated customer management platform is a foundation for the infrastructure needed to achieve our ambitious growth targets.” – Phil Hill, Chief Information Officer, BMS Group

  • Replace a combination of disparate Salesforce.com customer data and internal spreadsheets with a global CRM tool that will integrate seamlessly with a core insurance-broking system
  • Implement a comprehensive, easy-to-use CRM system to help achieve the ambitious growth target of doubling in size over four years to become a more prominent insurance and reinsurance player in the global market
  • Develop a formal sales process to enable a large number of independent insurance traders across the world to efficiently and effectively cross-sell to customers, to increase growth in the global insurance and reinsurance market by utilizing the power of the group
  • Ensure the CRM system provides scalability and flexibility in managing the five- to seven-year sales process typical in the industry, to facilitate more robust relationship-building with insurance companies and other customers

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Replaced a combination of internal spreadsheets and disparate Salesforce.com platform data with an easy-to-use and integrated customer relationship management tool to drive business growth and streamline management reporting across the organization
  • Integrated Oracle CRM On Demand with desktop tools and mobile devices—such as PDAs and iPads—to provide brokers streamlined access to customer and trading information during meetings with customers and prospects
  • Demonstrated the scalability and flexibility of Oracle CRM On Demand by adding new customers at point-of-contact during face-to-face meetings, enabling sales staff to reap benefits from the new solution immediately
  • Enabled quantifiable measurements of the five- to seven-year sales process for the first time in company history, providing a comprehensive view and analysis of the sales pipeline to facilitate more sophisticated business insight and planning
  • Worked with Oracle Partner BPI OnDemand to implement Oracle CRM On Demand, using Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies to speed implementation of a tailored, easy-to-use interface accessible to the team of insurance brokers, sales professionals, and business development managers via various mobile devices—such as iPads
  • Automated many time-consuming administrative tasks, enabling sales staff to focus on customer management and sales, rather than administration

Why Oracle

BMS Group previously used a combination of internal spreadsheets and Salesforce.com to manage parts of the customer sales business, which at times was cumbersome and time-consuming. The company needed a robust, yet easy and straightforward tool to better manage the customer relationship and pipeline, and it required a mobile functionality for iPads used by the sales staff. Oracle CRM on Demand met all these needs and was designed to address the company’s specific business processes.

“With Oracle CRM On Demand, we can accurately measure and analyze our sales pipeline, which includes sales processes ranging from five to seven years. Many of the other systems we looked at simply could not provide us with the level of detail and visibility needed to maintain successful and profitable relationships for a longer period of time,” said Phil Hill, chief information officer, BMS Group.

Implementation Process

BMS Group took a standard approach to the solution implementation, initially deploying a model system within a small subsection of the company. With this approach, the company successfully implemented Oracle CRM On Demand for a small number of test users and is working to extend the system to the rest of the organization. This flexible approach to development, coupled with the expertise of Oracle Partner BPI OnDemand, ensured a successful implementation.

Partner

  BMS Group worked with Oracle Partner BPI OnDemand to implement Oracle CRM On Demand with no upfront cost. BPI OnDemand utilized its knowledge and expertise within the insurance sector to deliver the solution within weeks rather than months, with the help of the Oracle Accelerate CRM On Demand Solution for the insurance industry.

“Working with Oracle Partner BPI OnDemand has been a very positive experience. Both Oracle and BPI OnDemand demonstrated a high level of professionalism and service and were always available to answer questions—throughout the initial implementation of just 20 users and beyond. Their involvement added to the extreme value of our Oracle solution, as we were able to tailor the product specifically to our needs,” said Phil Hill, chief information officer, BMS Group.

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