Questions to Ask

Market Line Associates is often asked to help financial institutions understand what the important issues are when selecting a profitability provider. We find that some potential solutions are limiting in what their models can handle, while others are lacking because they provide little support. The important thing is to find an appropriate mix of sophistication and financial expertise. To that end we have prepared some questions that may assist you in your partner evaluations:

1. How long have you been in the account and/or customer profitability business?
2. How many clients do you have?
   How many of your clients are running their profitability in a production environment updating the model monthly?
   For how long have they been doing that?
3. How long does the typical conversion project take?
   What can we expect our typical turnaround times to be in a monthly production environment?
4. How many FTEs will it take for us to run your model each month?
5. Is each input system limited to the same number of data elements for each system extract?
   What format options do I have for data elements?
   How many data elements can be included?
   Is there a limit to the number of input application systems that can be put into the model?
6. What level of support do you provide during the data selection process?
   Do you assist with the file extract creation?
   Is this support included in the total project cost?
7. What resources do you provide during the initial model setup or the conversion process?
   What resources do you provide during monthly production?
8. What level of support do you provide for the reconciliation process each month, either in terms of consulting or reports?
9. What are the data scrubbing and data quality control features of your model?
10. How does your model handle data elements that may come into the model with values other than those expected in any given month?
11. What kind of documentation do you provide?
    What types of training do you provide?
12. How many levels of profitability are included in the model?
13. How does your model handle customerization?
    Can the model support more than one customer definition, i.e. one for retail and another for commercial; or account, customer and household?
14. How is transaction information integrated into the model?
15. What level of support do you provide with transaction processing, mapping, etc.?
16. What level of support do you provide with costing assumptions?
    Do you have industry benchmarks for certain costs if we need them?
17. What level of support do you provide for Funds Transfer Pricing assignment?
18. What are the standard outputs that come with the model?
    Reports?
    Files?