In his keynote address to delegates at the 2007 Lac Carling Congress, Wayne Bossert asserted the vision of Royal Bank as it relates to client service delivery.
Bossert, senior vice-president of service delivery with RBC Royal Bank, said its mantra was, "Always earning the right to be our client's first choice."
And being the first choice of the client was not always easy for RBC, as 2004 saw a flat trend in client loyalty, according to Bossert.
He said that some of the factors that contributed to this low period were competing priorities and organizational silos, not unlike those that occurred in the public sector, which aims to have a citizen-centred focus.
"Customers said we were getting increasingly difficult to do business with," said Bossert. "We had to get back to the fundamentals and put the client first."
The result of this back-to-basics approach was three key items in the bank's business transformation, according to Bossert.
The first was to align the organization, which involved pulling together operational and technology capabilities in its global technology operations (GTO).
The remainder included identifying key financial objectives and transformational behaviours, which meant outfitting employees with the right skills and leadership, and empowering frontline customer staff.
"This client-first focus was placing employees at the centre of what they do, and ensuring that we had the collaboration, speed and agility to achieve that."
Bossert said RBC's GTO platform model was based on objectives that included a single point of accountability on all technology and operations decisions, and more streamlined decision-making.
He added that the GTO was created to ensure RBC was accountable on four strategic themes:
1)B driving client value
2)B innovation in everything RBC does
3)B safety and soundness
4)B performance accountability
He stressed these goals could be achieved only with the involvement of RBC employees, and putting in place award recognition and acknowledgement for the work they do.
He said RBC measured the success of the improvements to its client-service delivery through employee opinion surveys and client satisfaction surveys.
"We've seen more improvement in the last two years than the previous five, regarding customer service delivery," said Bossert. "We're happy with the progress we're making, but we've got a lot more to do."
When asked by one of the attending delegates about the steps RBC took to address change management, Bossert replied that cultural change was by far the toughest task.
He said the bank held workshops with executives, who then involved the next level of employees in the dialogue so that all employees were aware of the changes that were taking place.
"We clearly communicated to our leaders about what kind of organization we wanted to have," said Bossert. "This helped galvanize the organization, because what gets accomplished is important only in so far as how it gets accomplished."
* Per Kristensen, chief technology officer for the City of Nanaimo, B.C., was honoured yesterday with the 2007 Peter Bennett Award on behalf of the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) of Canada.
Peter Bennett, who passed away in 2005, was described by award presenter Kevin Peacock of the City of Saskatoon, and MISA Canada president, as a beloved and highly regarded colleague.
"What we look for in the recipient of the Peter Bennett award is a municipal IT leader who has a strong service delivery focus," said Peacock.
Kristensen was one of the founding members of MISA B.C. in 1994, in addition to being a past president of the organization.
Under Kristensen's leadership, the City of Nanaimo has won numerous awards for its work in IT, including the gold medal award for its Web site in 1999.
In his acceptance of the award, Kristensen maintained that he prefers to keep a low profile. "This was a surprise - thank you very much to everyone at MISA," said Kristensen. "Even though I may say a few odd things now and again to stir the pot, I think we are making great progress, so let's keep moving forward."
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