Operational Data: A Treasure Trove of Business Insights

Firms have long leveraged their operational data to drive back-office performance. Whether it’s higher productivity and quality, better workforce planning and scheduling, or greater efficiencies and workflows, firms turn to their operational data to help improve their back-office processes.

Getting more out of your operational data

Firms are so accustomed to using operational data to help improve their back office that they may be missing out on other key areas to drive organizational performance and growth. For example, operational data can also provide greater insight and understanding into:

• Optimizing service delivery and the customer experience.
• Identifying new product opportunities and features.
• Improving upon existing products and services.
• Enhancing sales and marketing activities.

SS&C’s data science team works with clients to get the most insight and intelligence from their operational data to make better business decisions. We have helped clients identify product opportunities, improve service and product features, and help identify unmet customer needs—all by tapping into their operational data. The following is one example.

Case Study: Optimizing the customer experience  

An SS&C client approached its relationship team looking to optimize its customer service. When it comes to customer care, providing the best possible experience isn’t mere lip service for this client. It permeates everything they do. Self-service and digital care efforts are of particular interest when identifying opportunities to improve their service offering.

The client had some hypotheses around how their shareholders were engaging with their existing service offering: 

• Younger shareholders were more likely to use the web and perform automated interactions.
• Older shareholders were more likely to use the phone and postal mail.

SS&C’s data science team analyzed operational data from business process management, recordkeeping and call center platforms. The team soon made some discoveries that disproved the client’s hypothesis:

• Approximately 50% of the calls were coming from an older population of shareholders; however, these same individuals were also maximizing their digital usage by doing everything they possibly could on the firm’s website.
• Further analysis showed that the primary reason these shareholders were calling the contact center was to request a redemption. The client did not currently offer redemptions on their website.  

The team identified an immediate opportunity to optimize service delivery by making redemptions available on the firm’s website. By allowing redemptions online, the firm also experienced a reduction in the number of calls into the contact center, helping streamline efficiencies and decrease contact center costs. 

Additional analysis yielded further insights and opportunities for the client to enhance their service offering, customer engagement and asset retention efforts:

• A segment of shareholders who were approaching or in their retirement years have minimal engagement with the client. Knowing these individuals would soon be in need of products and services related to retirement, the client developed a targeted campaign featuring tailored content on rollovers, guaranteed income and other retirement options and considerations. Their proactive, personalized outreach helped drive brand loyalty and retain assets through increased customer engagement and satisfaction.
• A segment of individuals with nearly all automated transactions used the client’s website and call center for “fact finding” indicating that the website may not be optimized for document finding and potentially causing frustration and negative brand sentiment for the shareholder. With this fresh insight, the client began testing new layouts of their website to improve the customer’s digital experience and ultimately their overall experience.

Helping you succeed

At SS&C, our data scientists have a passion for looking at operational data in a way that clients may not consider and surfacing valuable insights in a scalable manner. This in turn enables clients to make informed decisions based on data and deliver better experiences and outcomes for their customers.

Are you maximizing the business insights within your operational data? If not, you are missing valuable opportunities to improve the customer experience and grow and retain assets. Turn to the data experts at SS&C. To learn more about how SS&C is helping clients facilitate better decisions around product and service offerings and proactive customer engagement, contact us directly.