Gigabit December 2018

SBM BANK
326
for instance, we had to train all our
front-end staff,” Ramphul explains.
Corporate customers were accompanied
with small teams of experts to
ensure they understood the new
platforms and the value the changes
were adding. “We were present with
our corporate customers before and
during the launch, guiding them
through the new system.”
When it came to individual customers,
SBM’s customer service centre
was vital. “Our contact centre played
an important role in this – we had to
ensure that all staff were up to scratch
in terms of competency, knowing what
the platform was all about. One of the
ways of doing this was to involve them
in our user testing. They were an integral
part of the project,” he says.
Ramphul is confident that the bank
is already reaping the rewards of
implementing new digital solutions,
both from a customer service perspective
and through automating operations
within the company. “With technology,
we are able to redeploy our staff to do
more value adding tasks and more
revenue generating initiatives, instead
of getting bogged down with administrative
tasks. The second aspect of
technology is in terms of reducing
human errors – the cost of errors can
be really huge, like a manual error
where a transaction is duplicated and
processed twice… the risk of this with
solutions like robotics is mitigated and
minimised, so the cost of errors goes
down significantly.”
20%
Domestic
marketshare
1973
Year founded
1,500+
Approximate number
of employees
Moving forward, SBM will look to
DECEMBER 2018