why rpc
We are so far the only top management consultancy in the banking and insurance industry that has taken on the customer-centric transformation of our clients. To reach that goal, we live a holistic consulting approach with a high level of competence, especially in the fields of operationalization and performance improvement.
We work with our clients as authentic partners, which is a key-characteristic of our consulting style. Together we develop business ideas, plan projects and programs and implement them consistently and sustainably. In doing so, we consider various strategic and operational issues with the aim of improving the performance of our clients in the long term.
rpc has profound expertise in the financial services industry. We not only look beyond our own nose, but also work with you to develop the best possible solutions to help you outperforming your competitors.
We work with banks and insurance companies in several relevant business areas: From retail banking, private banking and asset management to customer and capital market business, from transaction banking to life and property insurance, health insurance and reinsurance.
Increasing customer focus for more organic growth
Together with our clients operating in financial services, we work to focus on customer needs across all areas of the organization. To this end, we design new customer journeys and sustainably increase customer loyalty through a perfectly coordinated customer experience.
Data monetization for the best possible support of growth targets
In order to remain competitive, financial service providers need a sophisticated data strategy. We work with our clients to decide on the right strategies and tools and ensure that the value added with data profitably supports the company´s growth targets. Furthermore, we make sure that these targets are also measurable via specially developed customer-centric key performance indicators.
Reducing complexity and cutting costs for profitable performance
We help to reduce and/or automate the complexity of products, services and processes to the degree required by our customers, thereby reducing costs while, at the same time, increasing the satisfaction level as well as the focus on higher-margin revenue sources.
Realizing synergies and prudently separating structures
Transaction and integration plans must be coherent and fit together. The challenge lies in clearly identifying shared structures and processes of the individual organizations and then clearly separating or merging them. We help our clients to achieve the calculated added value of the Post Merger Integration or Carve Out without losing sight of the end customer.
Sustainable behavioral change of the organization
Financial service providers must be able to react flexibly to changes in their industry, not least due to increasing regulatory requirements, competitive pressure and heightened uncertainty. This requires important procedures and initiatives not only communicated, but also that they are anchored in the minds of managers and employees. Together with our clients, we identify critical success factors, ensure clear responsibilities and create the frameworks for behavioral changes as well as new incentive systems throughout the company.
our approach
"Banking is necessary, banks are not". This quote from Bill Gates in the late 1990s is actually applicable to the entire financial services industry. The momentum of the "self-determined customer" has led to some drastic market shifts and adjustments in recent years. Today´s typical customer generally associates little or no emotion when purchasing financial products. Financial service providers have no emotional anchorage whatsoever in the minds of their customers, unlike what, for example, car manufacturers or consumer goods companies are able to acquire.
If customers are interested in financial products today, they expect not only high transparency, fair pricing and individual advice, but also comprehensible and simple technical solutions that enrich their personal customer experience, preferably in an omni-channel way. Today, customers expect comprehensive usability, user experience and sustainability when they decide on a product, just as they are used to from the GAFA companies (Google, Apple, Facebook und Amazon). The players who cannot meet these demands will gradually be disrupted away from more efficient competitions.
What makes us unique
As experts in the financial industry, we help our clients to bring about a sustainable and profit-oriented customer-centric transformation of their business models. In addition to the optimization of direct customer interfaces, this also includes a holistic view of the structural and process organization including ecosystems. We love to terminate MUDA customer contacts (i.e. customer contacts that do not create value), but also to implement e.g. performance-optimized, internal control systems (ICS).
With a high level of expertise in the area of banking and insurance, we ensure not only the development of sustainable, strategic objectives, but above all the operational anchoring of the strategies in the organization. In order to secure that this anchoring is not only process-related but also culturally fitting, our training and coaching academy offers tailor-made solutions for a sustainable change in behavior that really works. Our range of services is complemented by our industry specialists in the fields of data analytics and customer experience design to ensure the best possible and sustainable customer experiences for our clients and their customers.
video: we are rpc – the Retail Performance Company
our services
Our strategy experts support clients in mastering complex strategic challenges and developing tailor-made solutions. At the beginning of the cooperation, the client decides what he wants to focus on in order to act and invest better than the competition in the market – ultimately to generate higher returns and make its possibly low-performing sales organizations more efficient.
Since our foundation, we have used our industry and professional expertise to support the development and operational implementation of successful strategies. We are proud of our lateral thinking and of our ability to analyse fields of action that often remain hidden to others.
We are the right partner for you, because:
... we believe that any effective strategy should always develop its full economic potential and sustainable value creation. This includes determining early on where you want to be active and how you can succeed.
... we offer creative solutions that are based on extensive international but also regional experience and clear assessments of the available possibilities to create value sustainably.
... we are enthusiastic about thorough but measured cost and customer analyses with several different focuses: the potential of the core business, possible expansions or re-design.
... we help to define the right leadership model as well as the right operationalization for the selected strategies.
... we identify with our clients the prerequisites, which organizational requirements and competencies are needed.
... we help to make the entire company more flexible and always take into account all key influencing factors for a customer-centric transformation.
... our strategies are always goal-oriented, achievable, affordable, implementable and always aim at generating sustainable results.
Our core competencies include:
- Corporate and business segment strategies
- Strategic analysis and development of the vision
- Customer-centric target operating model design
- Customer experience management
- Portfolio analysis, benchmarking and pricing
- Trend analysis and mystery shopping
- Transformation and digitization strategy
- Sales performance excellence
The critical success factor for merging or separating corporate structures is successful integration or spin-off. With our customer-centric approaches, we allow you to avoid the typical risks of a merger, acquisition or carve out. We help our clients to increase their value by systematically shaping the change process and achieving results that exceed expectations. Our primary goal is to ensure the integrity and functionality of the remaining original business models.
The most important pre-condition for your targeted transactions is to increase the value rather than destroy it. Our methods and models are geared towards how you consistently plan and execute your project from a customer-centric perspective. To this end, we work with you orienting ourselves towards five essential dimensions:
1. Clear definition of objectives and approach for the specific transaction
2. Ensuring a customer-centric operating and business model
3. Active control and reduction of “cultural gaps” and fears of affected managers and executives
4. Highest possible allocation of the planned synergy effects in the structural processes, organizational processes and for the customer
5. Ongoing management of risks and imponderables, even by deploying "submarine/U-boot" projects
We are the right partner for you, because:
... we believe that every transaction should always develop the highest synergy potential and sustainability also by keeping a consistently high focus on the customer at all times. This is immensely important in order to break down the possible cultural barriers of the transaction through a unified target picture.
... we pay particular attention to the dimensions of customer, business models, organization and employees.
... our approaches and methods are based on a highly cooperative joint work with the clients and the necessary amount of empathy for all parties involved.
... our teams of specialists work closely and respectfully with our clients in order to deeply anchor a necessary long-term and beneficial change in behavior.
Our core competences include:
- Factual and legal independence of our mandate, thereby acting as a "neutral team"
- Development of controllable and strict process models
- Proven program and mitigation planning for large projects
- High hands-on and buddy mentality as a support for top management
- Political sensitivity and empathy even in critical situations
- Cross-sector blueprints with a focus on financial industries
- Clear focus on economic potential in combination with unique customer centricity
Transformation programs in the financial industry can assume many forms, including complete turnarounds. Our clients have several levers at their disposal to correct the course of their organization, in case this latter is not able to fully unfold its potential. We support decision makers in identifying, planning and implementing the changes and measures required for such processes in order to generate significant added value over a timeframe of several years and with the goal of making everyone a sustainable "participant” of the transformation.
Be it a new strategy, customer-oriented organization structures, efficiency improvements or sustainable cultural change – all these approaches involve a profound transformation within the company. To ensure that such changes lead to the desired success, what we at rpc call "transformance" is required, namely performance in transformation. With our expertise, experience and the right hands-on approach to people, processes, organization and technology, we bring change to life in a customer-centric way.
We are the right partner for you, because:
... we consider complex transformation concepts, top-down communication and distant visions "things of the past" – what really matters in a business is tackling the future together with energy, focus and a flexible, agile mentality.
... we are convinced that change must be tackled where it actually takes place. Our transformation approach operates at a "helicopter" level of specialists and managers, supports their path towards change and always keeps the "big picture" in mind.
... we pride ourselves on taking innovative and consciously creative paths during the change process, thereby maintaining curiosity and enthusiasm.
... we work closely with the experts on the client's side to jointly define the target corridor and orientate ourselves towards real, feasible potential.
... we are active at the level of individual teams right up to corporate management, believe that conflicts can be healthy and that dealing with them is a central part of any transformation.
... we are consultants with heart and humanity, so that despite ambitious goals, fun and team spirit are not missed out.
... our transformations are always customer-centric, goal-oriented, achievable, affordable and implementable - because we live from and for the success of our customers.
Our core competences include:
- Customer-centric transformation frameworks
- Customer-centred re-organization of the structural and process organization
- Measurable increase in efficiency and cost effectiveness
- Cost cutting with a focus on processes, procedures and hierarchies that do not add value
- Implementation of agile and customer-centred forms of organization
- Customer-centred cultural development for specialists and managers
Financial service providers must continually adapt or even reinvent their business processes to ensure a sustainable customer-centric transformation. Our approach is to look at all processes in their entirety and focus on those areas with the greatest potential for value creation. This is done across the entire supply chain. rpc works with you to systematically plan the redesign of your operations and to define clear tasks that will create a successful impact already in the short term.
Customer-centric operational excellence is becoming more and more popular in the financial services sector, not least because of the great importance of effective and long-term implementation of customer-centric corporate strategies. Operational excellence is an essential part of our DNA to anchor strategies and concepts sustainably in organizations, to make successes visible and to consistently develop the existing towards excellence.
We are the right partner for you, because:
... we see operational excellence as much more than efficient processes, but rather as an organization that strives to provide excellent services to B2B or B2C customers while at the same time operating efficiently.
... we have in-depth experience in customer-centric organization design, customer-centric control models and process management – and can develop these dimensions in a joint effort with our customers.
... we see the digitalization of companies as an opportunity to apply technological to operative processes "with a high human factor", so that these can have real impact.
... we are enthusiastic about aligning the organization and its processes to the customer and providing them with concrete and tangible successes.
... we convince our customers by looking “beyond the immediately visible things”, which is not only evident in our holistic customer-centric target operating model design, but also in the selected tailor-made measures we adopt.
... we work hands-on and always measure ourselves by the results that can be achieved through our support.
... our approach to customer-centric operational excellence reflects exactly what operational excellence is all about: the continuous pursuit of excellence, effective change and a focused alignment with the set goals.
Our core competences include:
- Customer-centric target operating model
- Standardization and automation
- Portfolio, program and project management
- Operational performance management
- Workflow and workforce management
- Robotics and RPA
hot topic
When implementing digital initiatives and customer-centric organizational structures and processes in the financial industry, the risk instruments associated to them must also be appropriately coordinated. In addition to fulfilling regulatory requirements, customer-centric transformation is thus becoming a new priority for the risk management of a bank or insurance company. Our speciality here is the interlocking of Enterprise Risk Management and ICS for the implementation and compliance of corporate decisions in sales.
Our certified trainers and coaches systematically contribute to the success of a customer-centric transformation by understanding the situation of our clients, applying the necessary industry know-how and skills to support them and executing the planned changes in a supportive but strict manner. This is backed by our highly efficient and international training infrastructure, coupled with truly effective coaching approaches for management and employees.
Customer-centric trainings and coachings have been one of the main pillars of rpc since its foundation. For financial service providers, we have combined our deep expertise from the automotive industry with in-depth knowledge of banking, insurance and health insurance. Based on this experience, we have derived a range of services that fully supports our clients in optimizing their sales organization. In the age of digitalization, virtually all activities and processes are significantly influenced by the use of software and machines. The importance of customer-centric training and coaching increases even more for all those activities that robots are not yet capable of performing as of today
We are the right partner for you, because:
... we are familiar with the dynamics between a group or Holding and its affiliated retail organization and / or agencies and pursue a structured retail transformation approach in our projects.
... we believe in an individual mix of frontal and software training, e-learning offers and 1:1 coaching to create a tangible performance effect that is perfectly tailored to the individual customer needs.
... we focus on sustainability. Our customer-centric training and coaching services are designed to create sustainable value.
... we have complete trust in our experienced trainers and coaches. Our success is also based on our joint work, as the trainers and coaches not only share their knowledge, teach hard and soft skills, structured working tools and present new working instruments, but also actively try to arouse the curiosity of your employees, to promote commitment and to inspire them for the new.
... we are convinced that true success can only be achieved through tangible and quantifiable improvements. Therefore, we have developed a holistic methodological approach and created a training and coaching platform for the exchange of information on reporting, controlling, progress monitoring and best practices.
Our core competences include:
- Sales performance coaching and digital fitness programs for banks and insurance companies
- Personalized design and conception of (international) trainings and coachings
- Persona-based coaching
- Comprehensive and measurable social selling programs
Article: Sales performance of the future for banks and insurers
How digitalization is changing the way the financial industry commercializes its products.
Our cross-industry expertise in data analytics forms an important symbiosis with our other consulting services for financial service providers. It enables us to develop first use cases already during the strategy definition phase and thus a tangible experience for our clients and their customers. The focus of our activities is the conception and implementation of data monetization and its operationalization in the organization of our clients.
more about our data analytics expertise
The great importance and immense value of customer loyalty in the B2B and B2C market is now known to all financial service providers, but in comparison to other industries is still in its infancy. Although banks and insurance companies generally pursue a proactive approach that includes the further expansion of Big Data in their industry, these approaches often lack clear objectives that are anchored in- and lived by the organization. A value-adding customer-centric data analytics target picture should have a strong focus on the following aspects, among others:
Strict analysis of routine transaction volumes for ad-hoc adjustments of commercial behavior (e.g. dynamic and target group-oriented adjustment of interest rates) for higher customer loyalty and better segmentation processing.
Product and service development oriented to the actual customer requirements. Data-driven product marketing in order to map the needs and requirements of customers in the present as well as in the future.
Reduction of risks costs on the basis of data models and customer-specific pass through rates
Personalized approach and customer solutions including dynamic pricing based on geographical and seasonal data as well as purchase history / persona (state-of-the-art in the classic "retail market").
Definition of the most important target customer segments and development of automated customer retention mechanisms for new and existing customers.
Definition of the customer lifetime value and operationalization of our "customer value cube" for all customer segments.
Customer-centric reporting framework with essential KPIs such as CSAT, NPS, ACV and its operational implementation throughout the organization.
Our core competences include:
- Design and operationalization of a customer-centric data analytics target picture
- Development of customer-centric data strategies
- Design and implementation of the "customer value cube" for the operationalization of the customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Customer and product segmentation, including internal / external data sources
- Definition and implementation of dynamic pricing and active churn prevention
- Design of dashboards using customer-centric KPI driver trees
featured insights
let's get in touch
Jan Schemuth
Managing DirectorJan Schemuth is managing director and chief financial officer of rpc. He is responsible for new client accounts and markets, business development, and operative business management.
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