Steve Buchberger
Senior Vice President – Payment Solutions
WAUSAU

While banks have invested in traditional business process improvements, the fact remains that the bank environment continues to be paper-ridden. Inefficiencies are rampant, resulting in higher costs. To remain competitive, institutions have to consider two types of technology: ones that take costs out of a process, and those that drive revenue.

The electronification of documents and processes within the bank can help achieve both of these goals. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and check/document imaging can dramatically reduce operational costs, while customer-facing technologies, such as remote deposit capture (RDC), can increase revenue by bringing in new deposits.

Everyone knows check volume is declining, but there are still huge volumes of checks flowing into branches every day. Teller imaging and branch capture bring a quick ROI when courier and processing costs are curtailed. Many institutions that are enjoying the benefits of branch capture are now looking at how they can drive similar efficiencies and savings for other paper-based branch processes.

As an example, WAUSAU’s Branch Renewal Capture solution streamlines new accounts, customer service and lending processes. Our Branch Renewal Capture solution allows organizations to capture and sign documents before any paper is generated. In conjunction with our integrated workflow solutions banks can realize immediate transportation and labor savings while also gaining new efficiencies in their back-office processes.

RDC has a positive impact in increasing deposits for banks, while simultaneously decreasing the workload at branch offices. WAUSAU’s RDC solution is being offered by eight of the top 50 largest banks, as well as leading mid-tier and community banks. The next step beyond simple remote capture of checks is integrating functionality into a corporate customer’s accounting system.

WAUSAU’s payment industry expertise in lockbox receivables processing gives us the experience to help businesses with the delivery of rich receivables information. Our Microsoft .NET-based electronic transaction processing platform provides a suite of integrated applications to handle deposits, retail and wholesale payments. These capabilities have been recognized as important factors as organizations continue to evolve their RDC strategies, shifting from their PC-based solution to a Web-based strategy. For a proven next generation solution, organizations are turning to WAUSAU.

Kirk Herrington
President and Founder
GaleForce Solutions Inc.

In many respects, short-term and long-term goals revolve around the same needs of customer retention and increasing share of wallet. Financial institutions must be more attentive to their customers’ complex and ever-changing needs. In order to deepen product penetration rates, institutions have to understand individual and household situations, and offer the right products and services.

We believe that a long term commitment to customer service is the best strategy. Consistency across the board is key: consistent customer service; consistent customer communications; and consistent customer knowledge. This deep customer knowledge must apply across all channels – branch, call center, online, ATM, etc.

Many banks are saddled with a five percent or higher annual attrition rate. When financial institutions deploy GaleForce CRM for Financial Services, they have taken a big step in cutting this attrition figure and increasing wallet share. Account managers, financial advisors, lenders and others can all use GaleForce CRM to organize, present and track information about their customers and deliver stellar service.

With a well implemented change management and CRM solution, I’ve seen a bank consistently increase their AUM at 30% per year with essentially no increase in the number of customers. That is very impressive performance particularly when you realize the bank wasn’t reducing their fee structure thus ensuring continued good margins.

All of our code is developed on the Microsoft .NET Framework and our solution sits right on top of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to extend its functionality deep into the financial services industry. Just as importantly, it works within Microsoft Outlook which means that employees are already familiar with the interface and so end-user adoption rates are greatly enhanced. On just one screen, employees are provided with a 360-degree client view that makes it easy for them to better comprehend the overall customer relationship (on-book and off-book) and thereby better target opportunities to enhance loyalty, retention and build share of wallet.

While front-line staff like our system because it works the way that they work, senior managers can drill into executive reports to better understand both staff and customer performance. Plus, the IT department can quickly customize our application using the standard easy-to-use drag and drop customization tools within Microsoft CRM.

• Edward Woods, Senior Analyst – Banking, Celent, LLC
• John Macaluso, CTO, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing, Fiserv CBS Worldwide
• Michael D. Nicastro, Senior Vice President – Marketing and Product Management, Open Solutions Inc.
• Brian C. Hurdis, President, Metavante Image Solutions
• Tom Berdan, Vice President, Product Management, Harland Financial Solutions
• Steve Buchberger, Senior Vice President – Payment Solutions, WAUSAU
• Kirk Herrington, President and Founder, GaleForce Solutions Inc.
  
• Greg Haislip, Managing Director – Banking, Microsoft Corporation
  
• Kevin H. Connelly, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Financial Services Group, Trintech, Inc.
• Paul Citarella, Executive Vice President, Alogent Corporation
  
• David Hampton, Managing Director, Financial Business Solutions, Getronics