Founded in 1873, Zions Bancorporation is one of the most respected and trusted bank holding companies in the highly competitive banking industry. More than longevity, Zions has grown impressively while still maintaining its reputation for personal customer service, expanding from its Utah roots to serve clients in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and Washington. One key factor in the company’s continuing success is Zions’ long-standing, productive relationship with GMT.
All of its full-service affiliate banks offer: commercial, installment and mortgage loans; trust services; insurance services; foreign banking services; electronic and online banking services; automatic deposit and nationwide banking and transfer services; and checking and savings programs. A key component in delivering these services is its branch network, with approximately 450 offices staffed with employees who cater to customers’ needs on a daily basis.
In fact, branch offices are the bedrock of retail banking: approximately 90% of customers visit a branch at least once per month, and about 95% of all sales transactions are conducted there. Even though they spend $124 billion on branch office staffing, most banks do a poor job of servicing their customers: the American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranked customer satisfaction at bank branch offices in the same range as the U.S. Post Office.
In addition to customer service shortfalls, banks constantly struggle with staffing issues. Do they have enough tellers so customers wait in line for only a short time? Are there enough individuals present who can sell their high-end services, such as business loans and complex home mortgages? Are their branches open at convenient hours?
Answering such questions has become more and more complex. Banks now offer customers an ever-widening array of services, and the packaging of those services has been rapidly changing. For instance, they may have a dozen different options for a young couple looking for their first home mortgage. Consequently, Zions is constantly works to ensure that it has a sufficient number of employees with the appropriate skills available to service its customers.
Since 1995, Zions has been using GMT Planet, a highlyacclaimed workforce management system that provides companies with the right staffing levels, so they can enhance customer service and increase sales revenue while controlling payroll expenses. GMT Planet also supports strategic planning and budgeting functions, ensures scheduling adherence, and provides employees with many self-service options. “GMT is a vendor that is constantly finding ways to improve its product and deliver more value to its customers,” noted Martin Dorrance, vice president of staffing administration at Zions First National Bank, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation.
The GMT system is now running in six of the company’s subsidiaries: Zions First National Bank, California Bank & Trust, Amegy Bank of Texas, National Bank of Arizona, Nevada State Bank, and Vectra Bank Colorado. The bank’s implementation, dubbed Scheduling Time And Reporting System (STARS), started off as a bank teller staffing solution but has gradually grown to become an all-encompassing management tool used for virtually all branch activities. Through the years, the GMT system has delivered a number of significant benefits to Zions. As a result, enthusiastic support for the system is now evident from top management all the way down to branch office personnel.
One tangible improvement is that the bank’s productivity has been enhanced. GMT Planet reduced the time required for managers to enter scheduling data from several hours to less than ten minutes per day. Before, managers had to look at the number of fulltime employees available, the number needed, and then calculate and recalculate complex schedules–by trial and error–until they reached the appropriate staffing numbers.
Now, they look at the base need required at the beginning of the month – usually just to get an idea of what they have been allotted – and the GMT system quickly handles the complex calculations. Until 2005, the staffing data were stored locally on branch servers, so providing branches with the most effective schedules was both difficult and cumbersome. Now, branches can edit information on a central database and ensure that they are allocating employees to the proper sales and service functions. The net result was a four percent reduction in staffing costs, along with a more efficient deployment of the Zions’ workforce–translating into hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential annual savings.
Another benefit is improved accuracy in the bank’s scheduling data. Previously, branch managers worked with paper documents that were hard to track. Now, the system offers them the ability to examine forecasted transaction data, which had accuracy rates bank-wide of up to an industry-leading 99 percent.
A new chapter in this business tale is about to unfold as Zions serves as a beta-test site for the next release of GMT’s Planet, which includes a dashboard function in order for scheduling information to be cross-referenced to company initiatives. The company evaluates its performance using 30 separate metrics, and the new feature provides Zions with more information about individual, branch, and regional performance. For instance, the bank will be able to determine how well employees are cross-selling different products and the effectiveness of different sales campaign. “Not only will we be able to look at how individual employees are performing, but also at how well the branches are doing in comparison to one another,” concludes Zions’ Dorrance. “This enhancement will provide Zions with another competitive differentiator, adding to our rich legacy of faithfully serving our communities.”
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