CUSTOMER PROFILE
ABOUT
Absa Group Limited is a South African-based financial services group, offering personal and business banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking, wealth and investment management, and bank assurance. Absa relies on its back-office agents to perform critical functions quickly and accurately for the business. For example, agents set up new customer accounts, perform credit checks, and secure, manage and vet loan documentation.
INDUSTRY
Financial Services
LOCATION
Johannesburg, South Africa
SIZE
1,800 Back Office Agents
GOALS
- Understand and improve agent productivity
- Reduce overtime spend
- Find hidden opportunities
- Automate processes
FEATURES
- Agent activity tracking to improve performance
- Accurate back-office volume data to enhance forecast and schedule efficiency
- Best practice guidance for business and technical optimisation
01 THE BEFORE
Lack of performance data made it difficult to control costs
A long-time NICE WFM customer in the front office, Absa was familiar with NICE WFM’s ability to manage the workforce and forecast volumes effectively. Absa had no such capability for their back office, making it difficult to plan for their 1,800-agent workforce. In addition, they encountered challenges in tracking agent productivity, especially during the pandemic when all agents were working from home. “We wanted to gain insight into agent performance, reduce overtime spending and better control costs,” says Fathima Vadia, Head of Workforce Management. “We wanted to be more efficient, but lack of visibility to agent activities made it difficult to identify opportunities. We didn’t know what we could automate.”
02 DESIRE TO CHANGE
Pilot validates the business case
With these goals in mind, Absa sought NICE Back Office WFM, a solution that would determine agent productivity with Desktop Analytics in light of the volume of work to be done and integrate the data to NICE WFM.
“We wanted Desktop Analytics, but we weren’t sure if everyone needed it,” Vadia explains. VRS helped Absa run a pilot to baseline productivity. Monitoring of 300 agents for three months revealed a significant gap between actual and perceived productivity; only 70% of total work time was found to be productive! On top of this inefficiency, Absa was paying agents overtime. The pilot proved the business case for rollout throughout Absa’s back office.
03 THE SOLUTION
VRS advisory helps Absa succeed with NICE Back Office WFM
Desktop Analytics delivers vast amounts of data to support forecasting and scheduling within NICE WFM. However, the ability to select the optimal data to reflect the business needs improves with experience. Additionally, the purpose and benefits of Desktop Analytics must be communicated to agents for optimal adoption, so positive messaging is essential. VRS assisted Absa through these steps, providing technical integration and best practice guidance for change management, user adoption, governance, and continuous improvement.
VRS focused on upskilling to ensure Absa’s workforce management team gained deep understanding of WFM capabilities, including the integrated Desktop Analytics functionality to help them schedule the back office more efficiently. Seeing early insights from Desktop Analytics and real-time adherence data in WFM helped grow Absa’s excitement for the solution. With VRS’ advisory and iterative training as they began regular use of the system, Absa’s back-office team quickly adopted NICE Back Office WFM. They also had easy access to VRS experts to improve their skillsets, performance, and efficiency continuously.
04 THE RESULTS
Productivity success leads to increased sales
Absa realised a significant return benefit of 36 million rand ($2 million). They’ve gone from having no way to measure back-office productivity to complete visibility of all agent tasks. This has allowed Absa to determine which staff members are more efficient or less efficient and to understand application utilisation. As a result, Absa saw many areas during the first year of deployment increase their productivity by 14 percentage points. Their success led to increased collections and an uplift in sales volume.
With the solution, Absa validated and replicated the initial pilot results, optimised the business for maximum efficiency and increased employee engagement. Thanks to improved visibility and productivity, the company saves an average of 75 minutes per agent each day.
05 THE FUTURE
Absa’s goal: remain agile and responsive to productivity insights
Absa plans to follow through on the opportunities VRS identified and insights from Desktop Analytics to increase productivity and reduce the cost base. For example, Absa wants to build out automated triggers related to application demand and the length of time agents spend on certain tasks. This will enable more accurate forecasting and scheduling and reduce time spent finessing the forecast.
Absa has already enabled AI forecasting and, as part of longer-term plans, is looking at a move to the cloud. The Agent App in EEM is also a huge focus for ABSA, especially for their front office. Implementing these initiatives will help Absa be more agile and responsive to agents while they continue to drive down costs and improve the customer experience.
