Successful Strategies for Controlling Costs and Staying Profitable

Tom Berdan
Vice President, Product Management
Harland Financial Solutions

In many respects, an economic downturn is a perfect time for banks to take a closer look at their operations and find ways to increase efficiency without adding headcount. In our experience with banks across the country, the biggest return comes when three areas are considered in concert: people, process and technology.

I’d start with people. Banking has not been immune to frequent changes in job roles. Consider additional training to give employees who are new to a role greater comfort with unfamiliar processes or policies. The same goes for training on your information systems. You’ll likely see a savings in efficiency, but you’ll also help retain your best people.

Beyond training, take a hard look at your highest-cost business processes, particularly those with a heavy reliance on technology. Harland Financial Solutions conducts Operational Reviews that address both technology and operational issues. These reviews typically uncover significant productivity gains for banks by taking better advantage of current solution capabilities that have been overlooked due to staff responsibility changes.

For example, take a look at your entire lending process from end-to-end: from origination to administration and risk management to loan servicing and collections. Identifying manual steps, duplicate data entry and weak technology interfaces can mean efficiency gold while also reducing your overall risk as you move to a more straight-through process. We can help our clients achieve this goal by providing a Microsoft-based, services-oriented technology platform that integrates CreditQuest® for credit risk management, LaserPro® for compliant loan origination, and the Phoenix^TM System for core processing.

In tough times, retention is paramount and technology can play a key role. Consider how your enterprise systems are enabling your bank to expand relationships with customers. The key is to expand your relationships and provide a business process to provide superior customer service. The Phoenix System integrates with our marketing analytics and Sales & Service applications, allowing tellers, call center agents and branch employees immediate access to customer data that can be used to provide new products and services to your customers.