Results

As this New England bank became a $26 billion dollar banking and financial services company, it found that its "Pay for Performance" plan to reward employees was consuming more branch manager hours as the company grew. Requiring nearly three days each quarter from each of the company's 350 branch managers, the system had become too labor intensive to continue. As the time to manage the system had grown, so too had the time between an employee's outstanding work and the time of the bonus payment. The company wanted to reduce management time spent on the system and reward its soon-to-be 10,000 employees faster. The company turned to CTE to devise a technology solution to solve its business challenge.

Challenges

The system that had been in place at the bank for some time presented challenges to managers, employees, and the finance department. Managers were spending an excessive amount of time working with what had become a cumbersome program and the manual nature of it created errors, which consumed even more time to be corrected. There were long delays between performance and reward, making it more difficult for employees to understand how they could improve their performance. Finally, the finance department had no means to forecast and plan for these payments, making expense management difficult.

CTE Solution

The company participated in a CTE's three-week Cambridge Executive Workshop (CEW), during which they developed a prototype solution to address the performance incentive system. CTE is a leader in collaborative business innovation services that accelerate deployment of enterprise applications. The company has devised the renowned CEW, a powerful, collaborative forum where CTE works with Fortune 1000 firms and governments to bring together executives, managers, end users, and other stakeholders to identify innovative ideas and quickly implement them as solutions. During the CEW, CTE specialists in business solutions and technology work with clients to:

During the CEW, six executives and operations staff from the bank worked with CTE experts to identify the processes that could be improved. They then collaborated during the fast-paced, three-week CEW to evolve a solution to pay employees for performance in a timely way and make the process truly automated, so that fewer employee hours would be consumed in administering the program.

Through the CEW, the company was able to:

Following the CEWs, the company moved into CTE's Rapid Application Development (RAD) phase, a 15-week program designed to accelerate deployment of enterprise IT solutions.

Solution Benefits

The new centralized, automated system provides real-time reports for branch managers, reducing the number of days they spend managing the performance incentive program by nearly 3000, thus giving each branch manager nearly 70 hours more per year to devote to customer service and generate additional revenues.

For employees, the time for pay bonuses is reduced from six to four weeks to create a clearer connection for employees between performance and reward.

Further, this solution makes the finance department an active participant in the process, providing accurate and timely financial forecasts for the program, so that expense management is eased.