Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Insights

BMO Financial Group's 2020 AWARD FINALIST CASE STUDY : Best Achievement in Operational Excellence to deliver Digital Transformation.

Written by BTOES Insights Official | Mar 13, 2020 11:30:00 AM

Read this article about BMO Financial Group, one of our finalists, in the category Best Achievement in Operational Excellence to deliver Digital Transformation, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2020 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program.

BMO’s enterprise digitization program was established in 2015 to transform sales and service processes by building and implementing foundational digitization capabilities such as scanning electronic forms, electronic signatures, document upload & more. Between 2017-19, we focused on transforming the inefficient and legacy retail investments processes in Canadian branches. This transformation impacted 11,000 employees in 900+ Canadian branches, creating capacity for better customer conversations.

We addressed four challenges in this first phase of our roadmap:

  1. Manual processes that resulted in duplication and errors
  2. Lack of system controls in selecting the right products for customers, resulting in customer dissatisfaction due to call-backs
  3. Complex and inconsistent transaction forms
  4. Excessive branch management time spent on regulatory compliance activities

Key Projects - Impact & Results of our Deployment

  1. Automated Money Movement: We enabled the ability to automatically debit a customer account for investment purchases and eliminated over 650,000 manual transactions annually, that would have been previously required, saving about 60 minutes per day per branch.
  2. Smart KYC (Know Your Client): We introduced real-time system checks which ensures we are recommending the best products that match our customers investment objectives and risk appetite. This has generated 56,000 warnings and prevented 16,000 product selection errors, saving customers from having to come back into the branch.
  3. eForms: We rationalized over 145 complex and inconsistent paper transaction forms into 25 dynamic digital templates. Using simplified templates means that our forms are consistent and clear, vastly improving the user experience. The underlying application (Quadient) is business-maintained and allows us to be nimble with future updates.
  4. eSignatures: We provided iPads to over 6,000 investment salespeople to enable electronic signatures. Over 350,000 investment documents have since been e-signed, which customers can access via online banking. This has also improved our audit performance as forms can no longer be misplaced, and signatures no longer missed. We have eliminated the printing of over 10 million sheets of paper annually – a key step in BMO’s commitment to a sustainable future.
  5. Branch Compliance Officer (BCO) Centralization: We strengthened adherence to regulatory compliance and created capacity for customer conversations by moving next-day Mutual Fund audits from branches to a centralized back office team through a new digitized solution. The new system has eliminated 35% of total audits and over 1800 daily audits. Of the remaining 65% auditable transactions, 60% are now audited by the centralized BCO teams.
  6. Branch Compliance Officer (BCO) Pre-Approval: Previously, if a customer was served by a newly qualified salesperson, they were required to wait up to 30 minutes due to a mandatory manual pre-approval process. We implemented a digital and centralized workflow that now takes less than 8 minutes to complete.

Our transformation journey over the past three years has generated excitement and pride in the frontline. BMO is perceived as the market leader in digitization. We have ambitious goals for 2020 and beyond, to continuously optimize business processes to increase frontline capacity and provide a seamless user experience.

About the Awards

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards have been established to showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs. Click here to view the Press Release.

The winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony at The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Awards (BTOES) on Wednesday, March 25th, 2020, from 6.30pm in the Venetian Ballroom at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando Resort.

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards are open to all organizations, both private and public sector, across the globe, which have implemented Operational Excellence programs to deliver outstanding business results.

The Awards will be held in conjunction with the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit, BTOES 2020 in the beautiful Venetian Ballroom on March 25, 2020 at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando™️. Click to access the agenda, view the current speakers, and watch the highlights video from last year.

 

BTOES.com

The issues in this article are just one of topic areas that are going to be discussed at the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit & Industry

BTOES is the industry’s biggest and best, senior-level, cross-industry gathering of Business Transformation & Operational Excellence industry leaders and senior executives.

It also hosts the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awardswhich showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs.

The summits hosts a number of private forums for C-Level & Global corporate-level leaders as well as business unit heads.

With over 150 speakers, over 100 sessions, 12 Keynotes, 9 Track Themes, 5 parallel tracks, 60+ track sessions, 50 roundtable discussions, 20 Interactive Workshops, 6 Thought Leader Panels, 5 Leaders Boardrooms, 5 co-located events, the Industry Awards Program, Site Visits, 20+ hours of social networking including 2 gala cocktail parties, dinners, numerous group activities, this is the ultimate event to benchmark, network and drive Operational Excellence to the next level.

 

Quick Links

Speakers

Agenda

BTOES Awards

 

There is a strong focus on Cultural Transformation, Customer Delight, Sustaining an Operational Excellence program, Need for end-to-end Business Transformation, Keeping up with new technologies/impact of digitalization and Leadership Buy-in & Understanding. We dedicated two tracks to advanced technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, RPA, Predictive Analytics, Blockchain, Cloud infrastructure etc.

The agenda is designed to encourage active meaningful conversations though all day enhanced networking and interaction opportunities, including

  • All-day Refreshment & Themed Breaks

  • 1¼ Hour Hot Breakfast Networking Sessions

  • 1½ Hour Hot Plated Networking Lunches with Topic & Industry Sector focussed tables

  • 1½ Hour Roundtable Sessions by Topic & Industry Sector.

  • Keynote & Themes Panel Sessions

  • Hosted Welcome Receptions from 5.30pm

  • Expanded more lavish Awards Program

  • Newly launched Night Summit for attendees to meet after dinner

For more information or to discuss the summit in more detail please schedule a call below,

Click here to schedule a call.