There is an enormous amount of money spent by financial institutions every year in excess labor costs. A perfect example of excess labor cost at a bank is having too many tellers at any given time working in a branch. How does a bank know if it has too many tellers? It is simple, in most cases if there is nobody waiting in line… then you have too many tellers. Unfortunately, it is common to not have an account holder in front of all the tellers in the teller-line . This is frusterating to see, but many see it as an unavoidable expense. “How am I suppose to schedule tellers based on demand?”
There are actually teller scheduling software programs that accomplish this for retail banking operations by scheduling tellers from historic transaction volumes. Financial institutions have saved millions doing this. Below are teller efficiency software attributes that you should look for when sourcing this type of software.
- Rapid Deployed Outsourced Solution
- Actionable Business Intelligence Information: A program that provides the exact decision-support information you need to establish teller-line productivity accountability – leading to a reduction in the average cost per transaction processed.
- An Effective Teller Scheduling Engine that is a powerful, yet easy-to-use, web-based system that creates optimum work schedules — matching employee work preferences with account holder traffic patterns at your branch.
- Peer-To-Peer Comparable Performance Benchmark Data that guides and encourages both financial and operational performance improvement.
- A Proprietary Assessment and Analysis Tools that drive a reduction in operating expenses (sometimes in the millions) such as,our workflow utilization reports, our excess-waiting-for-work analysis and our hours of operations assessment.
- Identify Teller Coaching Opportunities: Tellers will be motivated to excel and be appreciative of the targeted coaching, resulting in a significant improvement in their productivity and service levels.
- A Complimentary Evaluation Trial is where the prospect is able to test drive TMS for 30-days, using their actual data for no cost and before signing a contract.
- A Bottom Line Performance Driven Program in many cases has produced less than a one-year payback. For example, 8 out of 10 new clients have been able to have a positive net cash flow from the first day after signing our contract by eliminating the required number of current outstanding teller requisitions.
- Retail Banking Workforce Management Expertise: An exclusive focus on the financial institution, which allows an intimate knowledge of clients and the metrics that are important to bank and credit union managers.
- World-Class Customer Support and Service Efforts
Great post. I would recommend Financial Management Solutions, Inc. (FMSI) for this type of software (http://www.fmsi.com). I have used workforce optimization tools for over 20 years, and the tools from FMSI are excellent.
I highly recommend them not only for the tools they provide, but also for the service that goes with the sale. I have worked with many vendors in my professional life, and no one compares to the level of service provided by FMSI. The support team answers the phones, returns the calls, and comes to your location to see how things are going. FMSI wants you to succeed, because if you do, the company will continue to grow and help others know their business.
As a client of FMSI at a financial institution in Florida, our team drastically reduced our operating expenses using al three tools from FMSI. We used the savings to improve rates, returns, pay, benefits, delivery channels, and fund our strategic expansion. Turnover was reduced from 28% to 12% overall, primarily due to pay equity created from FMSI’s incentive plans for member facing positions, as well as other incentives derived from the rich reporting functionality from FMSI’s tools.
As it says in Chad’s post, FMSI is a privately held company and have been around for over 20 years, with leadership that came from the banking and credit union world. They know the business, and want to help others thrive in all economic conditions by having efficiently run operations and high morale on member facing teams.