In a world of global financial uncertainty, banks and other financial services organizations need to be alert to any opportunity to increase revenue and decrease the cost of doing business. As banks and financial institutions focus their attention on recovery following the economic downturn of the last decade, there’s greater pressure to find ways to reduce unnecessary expenditures and save money. Fortunately, that’s exactly what an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) like IBM TRIRIGA® does. If your bank or financial institution is in search of new cost optimization techniques, read on.

Cost Optimization Techniques for Banks: Facilities Management

The costs of running operations smoothly can seem like a solid block of fixed expenses. Real estate and facility expenses account for 20%+ of expenditures for many organizations—and banks are no exception. In fact, it’s estimated that in terms of real estate, banks often spend 15% to 20% more than other retailers on comparable space. Analyzing the individual components of those expenses can uncover opportunities for savings. IBM TRIRIGA’s Facilities Manager module gives you a single view of your entire real estate and facilities portfolio, which allows you the chance to consider how much use you’re getting out of all of your buildings. The idea is to get roughly 95% usage out of each space—enough to give you the flexibility to rearrange floor plans as needed, but not so much that you’re paying a ton for space that sits fallow.

This is not just a theoretical exercise: TRIRIGA uses a geographic information system (GIS) to track the locations and demographics of all your bank branches, providing you with an important source of accurate information, which can prove especially valuable during mergers and acquisitions. TRIRIGA also uses CAD drawings of each facility in your portfolio, which lets you work from precise current square footage data instead of relying on usable-area figures that may be inaccurate or outdated. Precision-based space allocation—finding the most profitable use of a given area, multiplied across all your facilities—reduces expenses and ensures you’re getting the most out of every location.

Cost Optimization Techniques for Banks: Lease Management

Lease management can be a minefield of hidden costs. For starters, there are sizeable security deposits to track at each location. When your company vacates a lease, is someone following up to get that money back? With TRIRIGA’s Real Estate Manager module, you won’t have to guess at the answer. We’ve covered before how lease management software ensures efficiency and saves money. Monitoring the terms of all your leases helps ensure you’re getting what you pay for.  

Staying on top of those terms is especially important in light of the Financial Services Accounting Board’s upcoming changes in lease accounting. With leases becoming capitalized, you’ll want to know what’s going on the books as assets. Having software to track it all is a must, as a system of multiple spreadsheets won’t be up to the task. This is especially true for global banks, whose real estate portfolio can contain leases in dozens of countries, each with its own regulatory regime. If your real estate portfolio includes multiple leases, a robust IWMS like IBM TRIRIGA is necessary to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Cost Optimization Techniques for Banks: Financial Services IWMS

Companies from many industries rely on their IWMS to uncover savings opportunities and manage their real estate and facilities portfolios. On top of these considerations, banks and other financial institutions have additional industry-specific needs. That’s why IBM TRIRIGA offers financial services-specific IWMS elements. You’ll be able to identify and offer the profitable services your customers need while cutting service and transaction costs—all with the reassurance that you won’t be adversely affected by some regulatory quirk in the process.  

You already have your own delivery systems strategy; there’s no need to alter your business model to use an IWMS. From construction to decommissioning, TRIRIGA will help you manage the lifecycles of your branches and other facilities while keeping you compliant with all relevant regulations. You’ll be able to see projected business demands on your facilities and assess various planning options to handle them.

Cost Optimization Techniques for Banks: Getting Started

These are just a few of the ways in which an IWMS can help banks increase productivity and get the most profitable use from every asset and facility in their portfolios. eCIFM has helped hundreds of organizations get up and running on IBM TRIRIGA, and we’re ready to help you. Our team includes some of the world’s top TRIRIGA experts, who improve it continuously based on client feedback. In addition, eCIFM offers a series of powerful mobile solutions to put TRIRIGA functionality into the hands of all your workers. If you have questions about how an IWMS would integrate into your existing infrastructure or would like to know more about how to upgrade from your existing platforms, we’d like to hear from you.