Our Business Model
Our business model is knowledge transfer. We don’t have a horde of junior consultants that are only put on projects to pad hours and add limited value. We only have senior, experienced consultants who train and lead your employees. In that way, your team does the work and gains the knowledge and experience to maintain the information going forward. This results in lower fees and better return on investment for your bank.
DEFINING REQUIREMENTS
Before purchasing a profitability system it’s important to define your requirements. These systems are like cookbooks. They contain a lot of different recipes and unless you define the meal you require you cannot be sure the system will do everything you want. There are a myriad of calculations to be made to create internal profitability results. They should be predefined and agreed to by executive management before selecting a system. To support you, we have white papers and presentations describing the 21 most important management reporting standards. Everything from local and corporate overhead to unused capacity to capital allocation to redomiciling customers of record, and more. We present our best recommendations as well as other methodologies used in the industry. In this way, you choose what fits best to your culture.
IMPLEMENTING PROFITABILITY SYSTEMS
We assist our clients in completing implementations on time and on budget. The software company you select will send a team to build the models to perform the calculations. They will meet with your team and ask, “so what calculations do you want to make?”. We are there with your team to lead the discussion and explain how to implement all of the decisions you made defining your requirements. We train and lead your team in creating the Activity Based Costs as well as help define all report formats, etc. We also work with your team and IT on data availability, including developing work arounds should some data be unavailable.
STRENGTHENING PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT
The professional management of the company should be based on believable metrics that form the basis for insightful analytics that are used in the proactive management of the business. Clear metrics that show results by line of business, market segment, product and customer are critical to the professional management of the business. Developing the metrics cost effectively is the first step. The end game is getting middle and senior management to embrace the results and use them in planning and executing on a consistent basis. We assist our clients in the design of a cost effective solution that meets these criteria.
FIXING EXPENSE ALLOCATIONS
Leading banks have moved away from expense allocations. Some banks have even developed a form of expense allocations called "activity based allocations". They think they are using Activity Based Costing (ABCs) but they’re not. ABCs are uniquely different than allocations, harder hitting, and are easier to develop and maintain. We can show you the difference between the two. Leading companies are using ABCs as the foundation for usage-based charges in their profitability systems; as the foundation for Activity Based Management; and, for ad hoc analyses.
ENSURING MANAGEMENT ACCEPTANCE
Financial systems that calculate and report profitability should be understood and embraced by the users of the information. Why is it then that so many business managers are unhappy with the results and unwilling to use them? The true measure of success in implementing Profitability and Performance Management systems is the use of that information by middle and senior management in the proactive management of their businesses. We assist our clients in rolling out the new information, conducting sessions for middle and executive management, diffusing objections and enhancing buy-in.
CREATING ACTIVITY BASED MANAGEMENT (ABM)
ABM is the use of ABC metrics in the long-term management of productivity, costs, margins, and the positioning and consumption of both labor and technology resources. Most companies have struggled to go beyond the basic ad hoc use of metrics, while leading companies have developed ABM as part of the on-going management process. We assist our clients in developing ABM and implementing it across the enterprise.
How Expensive and Time Consuming is a Profitability Implementation?
Defining requirements takes from 6 to 8 weeks part time for your team and us. Implementations last about 9 months. Banks from $ 1 Billion to $ 50 Billion in assets can expect 2 to 3 bank personnel to be required. Since you generally have to purchase software the entire amount is usually capitalized over 5 years. You would normally begin expensing 20% per year starting in the first year you receive benefit from the information. Capital expenditures range from mid to high six figures depending on size of bank.