California Utility Seeks Solution for Technology to Track, Manage, and Report Customer Rebates Received from Purchasing Energy Efficient Products

Challenge: Our client was faced with the challenge of tracking rebates provided to consumers who purchase products that include a rebate. An antiquated system was in place which required either an upgrade, modification or replacement.

What We Delivered: Sterling provided a Business Requirements Analyst to gather comprehensive requirements. The requirements were used to develop an RFP.  A Project Manager also lead the effort to keep the project on track and to manage and resolve the issues and risks.

Broker Dealer Opens New Product and a New Market

Challenge: How to increase trades and new assets among active traders in the Asia Pacific segment.

What We Delivered: Developed a bundled product offering to stimulate trades among active traders in the Asia Pacific segment. We did so by analyzing trading statistics of the market segment and conducting focus groups with a sampling of active traders.

We managed the development of the product in concert with the Technology Partner and coordinated the marketing and advertising campaign to promote growth in sales for a sample of customers in a "beta" test environment for six months. The product stimulated increased trading activity by 30% in the segment after going live in the first six months. Client decided to launch nationally.

On Line Banking Technology Upgrade to Increase Small Busness Market Share

Challenge: Online banking for business needed significant upgrade. This national retail bank was on the fast track to launch enhanced features to attract additional small business clients and meet the needs of current customers.

What We Delivered: Sterling Consultants managed the project team and developers across multiple IT divisions and technology platforms to develop project plan, created and managed issues and issue resolution, constructed functional specifications, walkthroughs, user acceptance testing, QA, change management queue, regression testing, launch and post launch upgrades.

Working with business partners, consultants helped to develop, test and launch new features including: online brokerage, access to Quicken and Money; Account Activity and Transfer Services; On Line Statements, and Email Alerts. All features were launched on time and 10% under budget; additionally, streamlining of developers' roles and responsibilities eliminated redundancies in development efforts for estimated annual savings of $1.5M.

Banking

National Retail Bank Develops Partnerships with Community Banks to Increase Small Business Footprint by Offering a Business Line of Credit.

Challenge: Helping a consumer oriented bank actively acquire small business clients. Our client, a National Retail bank, offered an unsecured line of credit (LOC) to 30 community banks under the community bank's brand to boost small business banking penetration. But most bankers in the community banks were not accustomed to serving the small business segment, and the added challenge of a new product introduction created hurdles.

What We Delivered: Conducted an assessment of the success of a small business lending product in New England using a questionnaire and telephone interviews. The results demonstrated that the bankers were challenged in developing small business banking relationships.

Our consultants worked to migrate these smaller banks to a culture of seeking and serving small business relationships, including a refresher course on "Sales Basics" to provide bankers with more confidence and knowledge in their communications skills.

We provided specific recommendations unique to each bank to revisit their hiring practices to actively hire sales oriented bankers, to reinvest in training and retraining, and to enhance or to develop marketing tools to attract and maintain small business customers.

Banking

Regional Retail and Business Bank Develops Foundation for Sales Tool Kit for Business Bankers.

Challenge: Our client, was faced with the challenge of selling business clients services with outdated tools and technology making it difficult for the bankers to remain informed and competitive.

What We Delivered: Sterling conducted an inventory of all current sales, sales support, marketing and training materials used by three divisions at the bank. This included all print and online materials. Assessed the materials to determine what materials needed to be updated and/or developed to support business prospecting and sales in the three most profitable divisions of the bank.

Surveyed key stake holders, assessed findings and provided recommendations to Sr. Mgmt. We identified four phases for constructing and deploying new content. We recommended parallel efforts to support deployment including training, infrastructure upgrades and sales portal technology.

Provided copy writers and one project manager to deliver. Additionally, we conducted Sr. Mgmt strategy sessions to outline a comprehensive sales tool kit to lay the foundation for a more robust sales foundation with the infrastructure to support the effort.