Delivering new efficiencies in the back-office

In a recent FST column, IDC said that increasing operational efficiency is one of the big goals for banks this year. But given the cuts already made, where can they find new efficiencies?

David Parcell. I think the next phase is definitely the back-office. Organisations in the financial sector all acknowledge that handling forms, quotes and claims remains a labour-intensive process. What's more, when the process goes wrong - volumes surge or there's a problem somewhere - the only solutions are costly and inefficient: get more people in or offer overtime. Given how performance-focused those same organisations are in their contact centre, it's a real anomaly.

Haven't organisations focused on the back-office before?

DP. Yes of course, but not in a measured and manageable way. Typically, back-office solutions have begun with devising the 'ideal' process on paper and then trying to build that in reality. That leaves a gap between what people think the process is - or should be - and what really happens.

The alternative is to start by mapping out what the real process is. Using desktop and process analytics, you can work out exactly how back-office staff complete a certain task: what tools they use, where they go for information. You can then quickly see where bottlenecks might appear or where the process could be easily streamlined. Because these processes are repeated thousands of times, a saving of a minute on each transaction is significant.

Is it just about saving time?

DP. Absolutely not. A recent report from customer experience consultants TARP Worldwide found that 60 percent of customer dissatisfaction results from problems in the back-office. Using process analytics, you can see exactly where the weak spots are: where something hands on to another team, or where account opening could stall. Once you've found those weak spots, you can take action - which has obvious consequences in terms of customer satisfaction.

Does changing processes not create a compliance risk - especially if staff are accustomed to working in a certain way?

DP. No: desktop and process analytics can actually help you improve compliance, because they enable you to track whether staff are following the right process. Are they doing necessary credit searches, for instance, before passing an application on?

It's exactly the kind of monitoring contact centres have adopted, and I think they provide an invaluable lesson for the back-office. Over the last decade, contact centres have become incredibly good at performance management. They have identified clear service-related goals, and put in place systems to enable them to meet them.

So how can that be translated to the back-office?

DP. To take just one example, contact centres typically use workforce management systems to help with planning and scheduling and to respond to surges in demand. Yet these tools are rarely used in the back-office.

Put simply, workforce management gives you the ability to match the workforce to the workload. For example, banks know that just before the tax return deadline, investments in ISAs will increase, and companies take on extra staff to cope. But what of other surges throughout the year? Are there certain days of the week - or even times of day - when the volumes are higher?

On a more ad hoc basis, when a backlog builds, you need ways to spot it and solve it fast. So imagine being able to redeploy staff from the front office to the back at the first signs of a problem. Instead of apologising to frustrated clients - and getting more frustrated themselves - agents are directly involved with the solution: processing claims or handling applications.

It's a new approach to optimising the use of your resources, and it begins with the ability to measure what the back-office is doing.

About

David Parcell is Managing Director of Verint Systems' EMEA operations and one of the company's Corporate Officers. Before that he was Vice President of EMEA for Aspect. During his career he has also held management roles at Co-Cam and Datapoint, as well as senior sales positions with Unisys and Olivetti.