Evergreen Investment

Q1. Describe the competitive environment of Evergreen

Evergreen Investment is a Mutual Fund company that is a part of the financial services industry often referred to as “Wall Street”. Many of the best and brightest minds are employed by the top companies in the financial services industry. Some of the companies are Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and JPMorgan each having Trillions of dollars of assets under management. Also with the new emergences of banks and insurance companies vying for the same clients, the financial services industry is not for the fragile firm. The products and services provided by the companies are similar (investment management, investment advice) and often multi-million dollar deals are awarded to companies as a function of “bigger is better”. Evergreen Investment has carved a niche in providing wholesale services to banks and brokerage firms but as mention earlier banks are vigorously completing for this business. So as a company considered middle of road as it relates to assets under management, human resources and technology, Evergreen Investment will have to compete, innovate and adapt to maintain its market.

Q2. How does a CRM system fit with Evergreen's competitive environment?

Evergreen competes in an environment where its customers need to be contacted and updated regularly. The database system, the customer relationship management (CRM) system, allows for a central area where all of the information on clients is stored so that employees can access the information, analyze it, and increase sales based on clearer and more up-to-date information. By accessing the information efficiently and effectively, Evergreen is able to compete against other companies since it can bring clients information they want quickly. For instance, wholesalers rarely have the time to access background information about the client the night before the meeting. However, with the CRM system, the internal sales consultant can bring up the information and tell the wholesaler the information on the drive over to the client’s office, which would not be much more difficult if the information was not stored in a central database.

Q3. Evaluate the previous (legacy) CRM system, providing any significant advantages or disadvantages.

Before the Pyxis mobile solution was implemented the workflow followed at Evergreen was as follows –

The legacy system required the wholesalers at Evergreen Investment to manually jot down client data like the company, office, personnel interacted, topics discussed, products, services etc. before and during each visit.