DREIEICH-SPRENDLINGEN, Germany -- update software AG has established a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) partnership with American Express Finanzmanagement GmbH, which is headquartered in Heidelberg. The American Express subsidiary, which only began operations in May 2005, has set itself the objective of servicing its customers even more extensively, and of further enhancing customer loyalty under the roof of the powerful "American Express" brand. Through this subsidiary, the credit card company has added personal advisory services in the areas of liquidity, provisioning and asset management to the range of financial services it holds available for members in Germany. The new offerings are based, under the American Express Select heading, on a portfolio of select independent financial products. For American Express Finanzmanagement GmbH, the sale of these financial products is not about clinching short-term contracts. Instead, the aim is the continuous servicing of its members within the scope of the American Express lifetime concept. It is in this context that the financial services provider will from now on place its trust in new partner update, whose CRM system marketing.manager in the Financial Services (FS) sector version supports lifetime customer advisory as a standardised solution.

"At the end of a multi-tier process we decided in favour of update software AG as CRM partner for various reasons," Andreas Adam, member of the management at American Express Finanzmanagement, explains the choice of partner. "It was important, for example, that update commands the different CRM disciplines. We were looking for a CRM system that could actively support not only our advisors in the operational advisory and sales process, but also the analysis of customer data and the collaborative tasks in internal communication." "On top of that," adds Martin Ehret, who is also in the management at American Express Finanzmanagement, "what convinced us above all was that update has already realised the life phase-oriented sales concept as part of its CRM system, and that it can be easily adapted to our individual processes. This enables us to implement our American Express lifetime concept without any great effort."

By the end of 2005, some 100 financial advisors at 16 branches of American Express Finanzmanagement will work with update's CRM system. Via the Web-based user interface, they will be able to access the centrally stored customer data from their respective workplaces. The marketing department will use the CRM system primarily for analytical tasks such as controlling or customer value calculations, and the results will flow back directly into the operational process. "In this way," Andreas Adam comments, "we will establish a consistent and efficient customer communication because the central marketing department and local advisors have the same comprehensive knowledge about our members."