Plexus Consulting Group    Success Stories
ABA Develops Corporate Intranet to Improve
Administrative and HR Functions

American Bankers Association (ABA)


American Bankers Association (ABA)
1120 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
1-800 BANKERS
[www.aba.com]
Contact: Carrie J. Heiman, Associate Director of MIS Customer Service

 



CEO: Donald Ogilvie
Budget: $65 million+
Staff Size: 360









Plexus Consulting Group, LLC
1620 Eye Street, NW
Suite 210
Washington, DC 20006
Phone:  202-785-8940
Fax:      202-785-8949
Email:   info@plexusconsulting.com


Vital Stats

The American Bankers Association's (ABA) membership consists of community, regional, and money-center banks and holding companies, as well as savings associations, trust companies and savings banks, making ABA the largest national trade association for the banking industry. Most community banks are ABA members, and substantially all large banks are members of the ABA. Most ABA members are banks with assets of under $70 million.

The Challenge | The Solution | The Process |Unforseen Benefits | Measurements & Results | Lessons Learned

The Challenge

How to meet daily operational challenges in a direct, relevant and efficient manner?

ABA's corporate intranet is only three years old. The initial goal for developing the intranet was to provide easy access to the Human Resource manual and associated policies. However, once an intranet goes live, it can either become a mere repository of accessible information, or it can do much more. ABA's management information team concluded that employees were suffering from an information glut and information famine at the same time. Web-based intranet technology is not a panacea in itself. The challenge is not just to "pour content out there." People need to learn to productively use it in a manner that is directly relevant to help meet their daily challenges.

The Solution

"The Inside.ABA.com mission is to provide near-instant access to the details that streamline ABA's internal business activities. Inside.ABA.com strives to make the internal workings of ABA quick, accessible and accurate, freeing us to meet the performance expectations of our members."

ABA has long been committed to using technology efficiently. While the intranet is not "mission critical" in that it doesn't directly affect members, it helps to ensure that every new employee becomes productive on "day one." As a result of the new and improved intranet, Inside.ABA.com, employees no longer waste precious time and energy "tracking someone in facilities management to find a red garbage can."
Successful implementation of Inside.ABA.com was a logical extension of the overall culture change within the organization. A "learning organization", ABA employees are involved in a continuous education process aimed at providing world-class service within ABA as well as to members.

The Process

"It's all about setting the right expectations."

To streamline its human resource processes, ABA took "the manual" and transferred it onto the corporate intranet. In and of itself, placing the manual online is not particularly innovative. The key is not only to make human resource policies more accessible, but more useful in day-to-day situations, by providing real-time access to the contacts and step-by-step procedures needed to accomplish inside business in a timely and efficient manner.

Timing
ABA's rule of thumb with regard to undertaking new intranet projects is to subject them to a 90-day feasibility test. If a project cannot be implemented in 90 days, it is unlikely to make a significant enough impact within such a fast-paced environment to be relevant.

The challenge was two-fold, as the intranet development team focused on two different and highly interdependent client groups:

  • ABA's Mission Departments, which work directly with the membership:
    • Government Relations
    • Professional Development
    • Communications
  • ABA's Internal Departments, which each have unique information requirements and roles in the hiring process:
    • Operations and Finance
    • Human Resources (HR)
    • Accounting, Facilities Management
    • Management Information Systems (MIS
      Telecommunications
  • With a "bird's eye" view of ABA, MIS customer relations and the intranet development team:
    • Identified the needs of different departments
    • Listened to the stakeholders
    • Synthesized their requirements into a comprehensive and user-friendly solution

      "A Transparent Process."

The New Hire page, formulated to streamline HR processes, leverages the corporate intranet to provide unprecedented service to hiring managers. Anytime that a manager is authorized to hire a new employee, several points of contact within Operations and Finance must be consulted to provide various services ranging from access to computer hardware and software, to delivery of keys, special passes and office furniture. On the one hand, the New Hire page was designed to help hiring managers keep these basic tasks from "slipping through the cracks." On the other hand, Operations and Finance staff also need essential information from hiring managers to smoothly process these essentials for new hires. The intranet has completely streamlined the new hire process by allowing these two groups to communicate in real time.

In the past, there was no effective way to discourage having someone call the help desk after a new employee arrived, which meant, in effect, the help desk and other support staff would "drop everything" for immediate new hire set-up and processing. For a support staff that's already tightly choreographed and scheduled, this was problematic, as it would delay other work. In addition, this lack of planning meant that follow-up details dribbled in over the week - or two weeks - asking for this or that setup in e-mail, computers, office furniture, keys, etc. ABA's objective was to streamline this process to enable in-house service providers to respond to requests in a world-class manner: when the new employee arrives, that person will be equipped to start work Day One.

Here's how ABA's MIS team implemented the program:

  • Assembled key Operations and Finance staff
  • Determined information that hiring managers need - - such as lead times from end-users - - to implement smooth new hire transitions
  • Developed online HTML form to provide "one-stop" new hire processing for both sides of ABA's service team

The formula enables hiring managers to log onto the intranet, check the appropriate boxes corresponding to their needs, and e-mail one request to all relevant Operations and Finance staff responsible for delivering the various new hire services.

Before the development of the New Hire site, hiring managers and their assistants would be responsible for digging through "the manual" to determine which of a dozen possible steps were needed (and in what order) to bring new employees on board. "It was all out there but it wasn't user-friendly." While it is common for associations to toss the information out there, hiring managers "shouldn't have to go hunting" to identify and assimilate routine policies to meet practical needs. Also, new ABA employees can now go to one intranet address to access practical, step-by-step information about and instructions for orientation and training.

Unforseen Benefits

Beyond New Hire Orientation
While the project began in an effort to create transparency and efficiency in the hiring process, the MIS team realized that Inside.ABA.com would also be an excellent tool for:

Tracking staff expertise - - Expert's Database
Travel facilitation At ABA, "staff expertise had been a moving target." A major challenge has involved populating the intranet with relevant, up-to-date information on resident experts responsible for various issues and competencies to serve both internal constituents and the wider membership. "No one had thought to call Member Services to note that there has been a personnel change. Now they do." With this heightened awareness of ABA's Experts Database, a key service of Inside.ABA.com, ABA's Members Services representatives are more able to locate the right expert quickly and connect them to the Member.
As a service to the organization's travelers, Inside.ABA.com is used to provide:

  • Links to airlines
  • Travel timelines
  • Checklists
  • Travel tips
  • Policy guidelines on everything from cash advances to laptop do's and don'ts

Measurements & Results

"Low-tech" colored checklists labeled "Learn 50 New Things - Win 50 Dollars!" were distributed to employees to record their progress. This method was chosen to "meet people where they were" and charge them to validate this record throughout the 90-day campaign with their department's technology coordinator. Each card contained 10 entries under the following technology headings:

  • GroupWise
  • MS Office 97 Excel
  • MS Office 97 Word
  • MS Office 97 PowerPoint
  • Win98
  • Telephone
  • Netscape
  • Inside.ABA (the corporate intranet)
  • "Other" (Department-specific)

Participants were by no means limited to learning 50 new things. A few learned up to 100 and even 150 new technology applications. Those employees who participated were showered with "goodies" from special campaign T-shirts to distinctive coffee mugs that displayed ABA's logo and slogan "World-class Solutions, Leadership and Advocacy," and "Embrace Technology."

Another measurement was a qualitative, subjective survey ABA staff completed in October at the start of the campaign and again in January, upon its completion. The survey sought to measure how technically proficient ABA staff felt they were with a variety of technologies, and how frequently they used web technologies.

At the close of the campaign, ABA's MIS staff determined not to "get bogged down" in post hoc measurement and skills testing, primarily due to the overall high caliber of ABA employees and high levels of confidence in their capabilities.

Overall, ABA achieved:

  • 78 percent participation in the campaign
  • Over 15,000 new "things" were learned
  • 3,027 of these "things" were department-specific (indicating that staff took seriously the challenge to identify the competencies they specifically needed to address)
  • 12 percent increase in the use of calendar scheduling - a major time-saving productivity tool
  • 15 percent increase in employee technology confidence
  • 17 percent increase in daily use of web technologies

Lessons Learned

"This works like a dream."

Key results to date of Inside.ABA.com are:

  • Seventy new hires processed
  • Staff feedback positive
  • Unprecedented transparency in the hiring process

The entire new hire "life cycle" can be traced from step one and all parties involved in the hiring process are provided with step-by-step instructions and links to the relevant policies governing each aspect of it.