Rurban Financial Corp. 'Banks On' Harte-Hanks Allink Connect for Improved Customer and Prospect Management
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE: HHS), a worldwide, direct and targeted marketing company, today announced that Rurban Financial Corp.(Nasdaq: RBNF), a leading provider of full-service community banking, investment management, trust services and bank data processing, has selected Harte-Hanks Allink Connect to improve the efficiency of its sales and service interactions with customers and prospects. Allink Connect, powered by SugarCRM™, is a vertically-tailored sales force optimization application for sales management, marketing automation, customer support and reporting.
Having achieved increased customer insight by employing Harte-Hanks Allink Advantage, a fully-integrated database marketing solution, Rurban wanted to deepen its view of its pipeline for customer prospecting and sales, and take advantage of real-time reporting for enhanced enterprise-wide efficiency, the company reported. Rurban selected Allink Connect not only because it integrates with the company’s Allink Advantage database solution, but also because it provides customized user interfaces and layouts, and vertically-oriented modules and reports tailored to address competitive pain points in Rurban’s marketing, sales and service processes.
"By extending our relationship with Harte-Hanks and leveraging Allink Connect as the backbone of our new enterprise-wide sales culture, we expect to achieve immediate and long-term value through more efficient pipeline management and improved close ratios," said Kenneth Joyce, president and CEO, Rurban Financial Corp. "As we learn more about our customers and funnel that information into the pipeline, we’ll continuously improve our ability to optimize each unique opportunity."
According to Harte-Hanks, Allink Connect will provide Rurban with collaboration and administrative tools to meet the individual and corporate demands of its sales teams. With the ability to track interactions, gain historical insights and report results, Rurban will leverage Allink Connect to optimize every phase of its customer and prospect relationships, and inform strategic decisions and initiatives. In addition, Allink Connect will help Rurban to improve marketing and sales efficiency by providing advanced data cleansing and matching through the Harte-Hanks Enhance, Verify & Match (EVM) solution.
"Allink Connect operates in real-time, which means it arms marketing, sales and service teams with the immediate information they need to manage customer relationships effectively and efficiently, while empowering frontline employees to have more relevant dialogues with customers," said Kathy Calta, corporate officer and executive vice president, Harte-Hanks, Inc. "The bottom line is, this type of enablement drives growth and improves a company’s return on investment [ROI] in marketing and sales."