Black Friday and All Things Smarter Process
With Turkey Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, early indications are that the door busters and lavish promotions didn’t really bring-in the shoppers in 2014 – different reports put Black Friday sales down by up to 11%. Why is this interesting? Even the biggest retail-pricing gimmick loses steam, as customers become more discerning towards product and service and not just price. Savvy retailers still gained though, by spreading out their promotions so as to give customers the ability to shop at their convenience. This bears out what we believe with Smarter Process – sustainable advantage comes only with operational innovation to deliver differentiated service, everything else is fleeting.
We’re very excited that one of our clients, Elevations Credit Union (ECU) was awarded the 2014 Malcolm Baldrige Award, the highest presidential honor for performance excellence through innovation, improvement, and visionary leadership. Elevations received this recognition due in part to their process improvements, driven by our own Blueworks Live:
- A cross-functional team at ECU drives the Business Process Management (BPM) methodology to foster improvement and innovation throughout the credit union. BPM enables ECU management, employees and members to design work processes that meet stakeholder requirements and are integrated with innovation efforts. Among the recent innovations is Branch 2.0, a nontraditional branch concept that “utilizes a consultative approach emphasizing quality member engagement, provides financial solutions in a user friendly environment through a one-on-one advice-giving exchange, and enhances access to mobile, online and advanced-function ATM services.”
- As a result of BPM, ECU has realized improvements in measures of process efficiency. Mortgage lending cycle time (days from locked to funded) has decreased from 49 days in 2012 to 37 days in 2014. Consumer lending cycle time (receipt of application to time of funding) by product has improved since 2013 for second mortgage, personal, auto, and Visa loans and products—even with increasing volumes. Mortgage loans per closer per month have increased from 90 in 2012 to 100 in 2014, compared to the national benchmark of 72.
It is this type of customer focused process innovation, where the biggest differentiation occurs – speeding up a client’s access to a funded loan by 12 days or 33% over a 2-year period, isn’t something that a competitor can easily replicate overnight. Read the full story of Elevation Credit Union’s path to the Balridge Award here.
We have an exciting calendar in December where you can immerse yourself in all things Smarter Process. For those of you in the New York Financial District, we’re back on Wall Street for a daylong IBM Smarter Process NYC event on December 9th, where you can hear directly from customers, analysts and our IBM subject matter experts about transforming your processes in this digital era. We’d love to have you join us via our live feed starting at 9am ET on December 9th – Click here for the Livestream URL: http://ibm.co/SPNYC.
From NYC to Las Vegas and Caesar’s Palace for the 2014 edition of Gartner’s Business Process Management Summit from December 10th – 12th. Here’s where the best-and-the-brightest in the industry come together to learn about new methods, behaviors, mindsets and technologies for making Big Change possible in business operations. Stop by the IBM Smarter Process session on Wednesday, December 10th, where we’ll discuss why knowledge and judgment work is among the next frontiers to tackle as we lower the bar for more people and organizations to take advantage of Smarter Process. Listen to Guy Kawasaki at the keynote, take advantage of 30 minutes one-on-one consultation with a Gartner analyst and also stop by the IBM Smarter Process booth in the Solutions Showcase.
It promises to be an exciting December for All Things Smarter Process.
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