Although it had grown to more than 340 locations across Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois, Commerce Bancshares’ tellers were, until recently using old Sharp teller machines.

“The systems were manual, they weren’t online, but they were pretty fast,” said Charles Kim, executive vice president for retail administration at the bank. Over the years, the bank had developed some highly customized sales and service applications on its platform. Whenever it considered automating its front-line operations, the bank worried that new systems wouldn’t be capable of providing the scope it needed to meet all its customer requirements.

“As a super community bank, we do business with pretty much everyone in our markets,” explained Kim. “We are 50 percent consumer, 40 percent commercial and 10 percent trust, plus we have a great credit card portfolio.”

Still, the old system was presenting problems – just getting spare parts and replacements for the aging Sharp machines was an issue. Plus, when Commerce acquired small regional banks whose staff members were using Fiserv or Jack Henry, the newcomers were dismayed to learn they would have to use old manual technology. Some left. 

But the bank has been growing earnings per share at 10 percent a year, and with 80 percent of its customers visiting the branch at least once a month, Commerce didn’t want to ruin existing success.

Now, the bank is rolling out Getronics’ Globalfs.

“We have a very customized platform, but Getronics was able to meet our demands.” It’s still too early for the bank to have any definitive numbers on the results of its investment, but on balance, said Kim, the bank has already profited from the new system, and he expects return on investment to continue growing.

“We are very rigorous in analyzing our investments. With Getronics’ online system, we actually slowed down slightly, but with the old systems we were generating a lot of paper. In addition, tellers had no email, which isolated them within the bank. Plus, the balances we gave customers through our online banking may have been different from what we gave them in the branch, due to the time deposits took to be recorded through the manual system.”

Having PCs on every desk improves the employee experience and enables staff to provide more service to customers and to make effective referrals to specialists within the bank. Because Commerce is now fully connected to bank records, tellers no longer have to walk away from the customer to look up large checks on a separate computer system before paying out cash. 

Overall, the trend for Commerce customers is to come into the bank less often.  That can mean that each visit is more important, and perhaps the transaction is more complex than something they would otherwise do through the ATM or online. The bank sees more of a blend of the teller and platform functions and the Getronics solution can meet those new challenges.

Tellers have readily adopted the new technology and the Windows environment means the bank has been able to reduce training for new employees from two weeks to just one, while sharply reducing the error rate.

“It also allows tellers to be more comfortable interacting with the customers,” said Bill Ferguson, executive vice president of the Kansas City region, “because the system does a lot of things they had to do manually before, like fraud checks. And it also makes the fraud checking process more consistent because it is in the system rather than left up to the individual teller.”

It also means that Commerce can push its marketing messages directly to tellers who can then make appropriate offers to customers.

“Using our tellers to sell and refer has become a requirement,” said Kim. “Once we put the learning curve behind us, we will focus on selling.” Commerce regularly produces reports on the call center and the Internet channel, but until now it hasn’t had similar information from the tellers.

Implementing the Roll-out

To implement the Getronics system, Commerce assembled a team that stuck to a rigorous schedule of progress measurements.

“The teller system affects about half our company, so we had to get lots of people involved,” said Kim. The bank staff held weekly meetings and then once a month Getronics and the bankers met together.

The monthly meetings were slated to last 30 minutes and provided discipline as much as communication.  Participants commented that before each meeting there were a lot of calls between Getronics and the bank to clear up issues. Sometimes the monthly meeting was over in 10 minutes because so much had been accomplished ahead of time.

Michael Kerr, vice president at Getronics, said that the technology company and the bank worked together closely and maintained excellent communications.

“We mapped the as-is and the to-be because we had to know where we were going in the long term.”

While the Getronics system originally was entirely Web-based, Commerce Bank wanted a .NET implementation that would function off-line as well in case branches lost access to the network.  This can happen with tornados, ice storms, and construction crews.  For example, at Commerce, one crew last fall cut through a communications line and knocked out several branches. When that happens, it is vital that tellers be able to continue taking deposits and cashing checks.

“When we made the decision to go with Getronics, they were working on off-network capability,” said Kim. “I think vendors have realized this is a requirement.”

Project Lessons

A senior expert leader is required.  A taste for martyrdom is also useful.

Kim said that Commerce appointed the head of teller operations, Carol Dickinson, whom he described as one of the smartest people in the bank.  He put her on the project nearly fulltime. Of course, she also kept her regular full-time job.

One of the first lessons was to develop a vision for today and for the future. The bank considered including a branch imaging system for checks, but could not justify it in the first release.  They included the capability to add imaging in a second or third stage of development.

The bank also found that regardless of how good the technology, a lot of planning is involved. “The key is spending what seems an inordinate amount of time on planning,” said Kerr.

“The pilot took twice as long as expected, and there were a few bumps along the installation since this was the first .NET implementation by Getronics.  But, we were out there on the leading edge and this is one of the best projects I have been associated with,” said Kim.

Packaging Channel Renewal

To help banks upgrade their retail branches and other channels, Getronics has launched the Channel Renewal program.

Getronics Channel Renewal includes software and technology, plus design, deployment, and management services to upgrade the retail banking infrastructure. Through a collaborative with Getronics, bankers can implement an integrated retail delivery solution tailored to their specific needs through one company, which is contractually committed to deliver results at a specified price per seat.

Banks can expect savings from the elimination of redundant hardware and software and the associated maintenance costs and through integrating voice and data communications.   Getronics Globalfs, an application suite built on Microsoft .NET, is a central element of Channel Renewal.   The program also offers technology refresh to keep a bank current with the latest appropriate upgrades.

“Getronics is the only company that provides a single point of accountability in delivering a truly integrated approach to services, infrastructure, and applications that maximize the performance of the retail bank,” said Jean-Paul Adans, senior vice president of Getronics finance services industry practice. “We empower banks with the most effective, productive, and cost-efficient branch environment.”

Microsoft is committed to becoming the technology of choice for financial services, said David Vander, management director for banking in Microsoft’s worldwide financial service team.

“Getronics’ approach to multi-channel integration and renewal is a perfect example of how the combination of our products with the expertise of our partners creates business value for the banking world.”

Focusing on the Working Environment

“Innovation will come not from the biggest banks, but the banks that are fleet of foot,” said Paul Jameson, vice president of strategy in North America for Getronics, a company which specializes in helping banks and other large enterprises take full advantage of new technology.

In addition to developing sophisticated systems for retail banking, Getronics is a global services firm that counts Deutsche Bank, Barclays Bank, ING, Novartis, Citizens Bank, Northern Trust, and some of the top retailers as clients.

Getronics has carved out an unusual niche – at least 75 percent of its focus is on the working environment where a firm’s employees use technology to deliver service to end customers. That working environment includes communications, screens, keyboards and security, said Jameson.

Microsoft’s “People Ready” campaign is a natural fit for Getronics, he added.

“Our goal in business is to help our clients be the most productive and effective they can be. Their primary asset is their people, and making them more effective has been our goal for years. We measure our impact in the performance of our clients’ people. We use technology, but we measure ourselves on outcomes such as up-sell, uptime, improved performance – the ability to do more with less.”

Many large firms find themselves running a mix of Microsoft operating systems because they don’t have the resources for an enterprise upgrade. As a result, they miss out on the advantages of the latest technology, especially the improved security of the new releases.

“We have shown that archaic environments will impact the productivity of your people,” added Jameson. “It’s not the cost of the new device that is scaring the banker; it is the cost to upgrade to it, and the disruption. Eight hundred dollars will buy you a super PC, but the scary part is upgrading and integrating it.”

Getronics will take over the rollout of new systems, as it did with .NET at Citizens, where it is handling a rollout to more than 1,800 branches. It has a partnership with Network Engines to replace branch servers with hardened network appliance that can be managed centrally.

“It takes out the complexity in the branch.” Once the new systems are installed, Getronics can provide remote management of operating systems and application upgrades, and replace hardware overnight, leaving it fully configured and ready to run in the morning. It also provides in-house e-learning, which one of Getronics’ top retailers uses to keep its national workforce up to date.

www.commercebank.com

http://www.getronics.com/