Coupled with the focus on digitizing operations, banks must adopt a considered, strategic approach to how technology will be implemented and utilized by the people working with and alongside it.
Currently, though, just 34% of surveyed executives say that when they implement a new technology to improve a business process, they always redesign the process first. While the vast majority of respondents acknowledge they only sometimes or never take this step, our experience increasingly demonstrates the need to wed process improvement and tech implementation. When investing in new technology, the implementation and process improvement should go hand-in-hand.
Once a bank has a strategic plan to implement new automated processes, the focus should turn to the people in the organization. By its nature, automation takes jobs normally performed by humans and turns them over to a machine. This leaves a pool of workers who can be redirected to higher value tasks. A bank’s employees, its human capital, remain a vitally important part of the equation – the formation of teams, roles, diverse talent, and training need to be considered. It’s when people and technology can operate seamlessly together that banks will find the largest efficiency gains.
Conclusion
We agree that prioritizing productivity via technology is the right investment for the mid-market, but caution that technology alone is not a silver bullet. Optimizing technology investments can unlock hampered efforts to lower efficiency ratios and boost productivity. In fact, our results revealed an alignment of the mid-market around digital-enabled productivity so strong, we posit that an industry where digital technologies enable more end-to-end online transactions and fewer branch locations, and where automated processes speed up and streamline operations—the mid-market could rewrite the formula around the optimal, achievable efficiency ratio.
About West Monroe Partners
West Monroe is a national business and technology consulting firm that partners with dynamic organizations to reimagine, build, and operate their businesses at peak performance. Our team of more than 1,400 professionals across nine offices is comprised of an uncommon blend of business consultants and deep technologists. This unique combination of expertise enables us to design, develop, implement, and run strategic business and technology solutions that yield a dramatic commercial impact on our clients’ profitability and performance. For more information, visit www.wmp.com.
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