Improve Staff Forecasting and Scheduling
Capitec is the largest retail bank in South Africa, with over 11.5 million clients. The bank’s portfolio of services includes transactional accounts, savings plans, a credit card, loans and funeral insurance.
The bank operates a network of over 840 branches across South Africa, supported by a team of over 11,000 in-branch professionals. With such a large footprint, accurately forecasting staff workloads and scheduling the appropriate resources to meet in-branch customer needs is a challenging task.
“We relied on a mixture of whiteboards and spreadsheets to solve forecasting and staffing problems,” explains Karl Senekal, Forecasting and Scheduling technology team leader at Capitec. “It was like reading yesterday’s weather forecast. Forecasting and scheduling processes were manual, slow, and labour-intensive.” Karl and his team used regression models based on the previous 90 days data, calculating future forecasts and staff needs based on historical volumes. Contributing to the inaccuracy of these forecasts, there was an ever-present threat that a branch may not be adequately staffed to cope with a sudden spike in customer demand, in turn impacting customer satisfaction.
Moreover, too many resources deployed in the branch during a lull in demand would frustrate staff who might otherwise have taken time off.
Staff scheduling was also absorbing significant resources. Branch managers devoted half of each working day to complete schedules – time that better focused on service quality and customer engagement. “The whiteboard was a jumble of names, times, and dates,” says Karl. “It was complicated and could result in error.”
Workforce Management Simplifies and Automates Operations
Capitec Bank deployed Verint Workforce Management to simplify and automate its scheduling operation and processes. Using the solution, the bank has complete visibility into and management of work, people, and processes across its over 800 branches, empowering it to efficiently plan, forecast, and schedule employees. This forwardthinking strategy is helping to transform workloads, empower the over 11,000-strong branch workforce, and improve the in-branch customer experience.
From a scheduling perspective, Verint Workforce Management enables Capitec to produce monthly branch schedules, as well as an individual schedule for each employee, that optimise the use of resources and workloads. Branch Managers can create their own branch schedules while providing Capitec’s central branch operations group with complete visibility into these schedules.
The days of relying on yesterday’s forecast are also over. Senekal and his team use customised forecasting algorithms to focus on two key parameters: teller operations and oneto- one customer enquiries. “We examine parameters such as branch location, the different types of transactions processed in the branch, and the different positions employed in the branch,” he explains. Senekal also has high praise for the Verint sales and support team. “We haven’t had any issues at all with user support.
The Verint team may be based in the UK, but it feels like they are right next door to us here in Stellenbosch. The entire team is responsive, professional, and understands the business goals surrounding our workforce management implementation.”
Benefits: Workforce Management Reduces Risks and Improves Automation
By introducing an enterprise-wide view into the work, people, and processes across Capitec’s branch network, Verint is helping the bank reduce the risk of overstaffing, overtime, and shrinkage. Simultaneously, the Verint software is helping the bank automate routine administrative tasks, identify time-off opportunities, and provide employees with the schedules they prefer.
Since going live, Capitec has experienced a number of specific benefits using Verint Workforce Management:
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- Increased productivity: Reduced the time branch (and assistant) managers devote to workforce forecasting and scheduling from half of each working day to 10 minutes per day. Managers now devote 80 percent of their day dealing directly with customers. The bank also reduced the time regional managers take to prepare for regular reporting calls from one day to 10 minutes.
- Increased operational visibility: Gained complete insight into all parts of the branch organisation, resulting in a shared understanding of who’s doing what, when, and for how long.
- Increased agility: Scheduling and forecasting data is now available in real-time, accelerating decision-making, increasing innovation, and enhancing the customer experience.
- Maximized staff capacity: Enabled the bank to pool branch resources across teams and align incoming work, backlog, and activity types with employee skills and schedules.
“Verint Workforce Management is so flexible and feature-rich that we intend to automate every aspect of branch and call centre reporting,” Karl concludes. “We are already using the solution to display 50 KPIs – such as branch consultants’ productivity reports – and more will follow. Verint is playing a vital role in helping Capitec align operations, meet today’s increasing customer expectations, and deliver consistently exceptional customer service.”