Don't Let Technology Pass You By

Abstract

Eight will help you survive rapid changes in technology It has become axiomatic that to remain viable in the 1990s and the decades that follow, financial service providers must modify their traditional operating practices in two fundamental ways: create sales-driven environments and lower operating costs. Less often stated is that technology is a critical component in achieving both of these objectives. The following statement is alarmist and extreme, but needs saying nonetheless: The most significant shortcoming in the banking industry today is a widespread failure on the part of senior management to grasp the strategic importance of technology and incorporate it into their strategic plans accordingly. To support an aggressive and successful sales and service force, banks have a driving mandate to know their customers. Information systems, namely networks and database technology, provide the most efficient and effective tools for collecting, organizing, and retaining information on your prospects and customers, and providing rapid, real-time access to this information when a sales or service opportunity presents itself. Technology also helps lower operating costs. Most successful reengineering projects undertaken to date have revolved around revolutionary process redesign based on new functionality provided by new technology. Old, inefficient processes are automated and enhanced, or completely eliminated as redundant and unnecessary. The aggressive pricing of nonbank competitors dictates that banks respond in kind or continue to lose market share. Eight core competencies define an organization's ability to effectively implement and modify processes around new technologies. These core competencies should be viewed by management, directors, analysts, and investors as barometers of an institution's ability to achieve satisfactory, high performance returns on its technology investments. These core competencies are leadership, planning, training, networking, database technology, imaging technology, risk management technology, and remote access banking technology. LIADIRSHIP: Jettison the cultural The banking industry has entrenched cultural baggage perhaps more burdensome than any other industry's. Some standard branch procedures have roots in the late 1800s. Instead of efficient and effective cross-functional branch staffing, often one finds task-specific, parochial teller and CSR roles in place. In this traditional environment, human resources is not flexible enough to meet peaks in customer service demands. Employees are either saturated with business or sit idle. By equipping branches with universal workstations, with teller, new account, and consumer loan functionality delivered to each workstation, banks can more efficiently staff their branches and lower their operating costs. One Midwestern bank recently redesigned a $25 million-assets branch to replace the five teller stations and five new accounts desks with six full-service workstations (networked PCs with teller and platform software on them). It redirected calls to a central call center. These changes let it reduce the branch's full-time equivalent employees from 10.5 to six and cut operating costs 40%. What does leadership have to do with all of this? Strong, confident, and competent managers are required to help an organization jettison its cultural baggage. Bank CEOs and presidents who mandate their organizations embrace the new technology and adopt their procedures accordingly without doing so themselves have achieved only mediocre results. Leaders who embrace the technology themselves and use it in their work and personal lives enjoy much better results. This is 1995, a year when consumers do not have time to get out of their cars to go to the ATM (thus the surge in and success of drive-ups). This is an era where ten to twelve hour days are the norm and not the exception, an era where voice response banking is a bread-and-butter product and not a nice-to-have add-on. …

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