Carving out success for a global banking provider

More than a decade ago, Konecta supported a major banking brand based in Spain with the ‘carve-out’ of one of its business processes. After such a successful experience, the bank decided to take things a step further by outsourcing its entire customer relationship management service, meaning that Konecta now manages around 1,500 people on the client’s behalf.

Back in 2011, one of Spain’s largest financial institutions – which has a presence in Europe, South America, and North America – wanted to explore different approaches to its customer relations department. The bank decided to entrust Konecta with taking over its internal operations, from human resources to processes and management, in what is known as a carve out – the transfer of an internal business process to a business process outsourcing (BPO) provider.

Inevitably, such strategic changes come with their challenges. For the customer, this was threefold: improving service quality, optimising organisational change, and reducing management costs.

In its earliest stages, the process of carving out the customer relationship management function covered back-office activities, with three main objectives:

• Offer customer service beyond branch network opening hours;
• Rationalise operating costs, which were often higher internally;
• Optimise the organisation, in order to strengthen expertise.

To test the concept ahead of launch, Konecta undertook a pilot programme with selected branches. Following positive results, which quickly generated cost savings and enhanced operational efficiency, a plan was created to roll out the approach over the following 12 months.

For each of its carve-out operations, Konecta works through a tested and proven process that consists of four stages:

1. Detailed analysis of the existing situation and subsequent requirements;
2. Transfer of services and maintenance of previous quality levels;
3. Improvement of existing processes, while capitalising on the strengths of the acquired organisation;
4. Implementation of initiatives to optimise and develop services.

Konecta was also able to build on its agile approach, existing expertise in the banking sector, and previous experience of carve-outs to deliver synergies with the bank’s already outsourced services, improving efficiency even further and boosting productivity.

After implementing the strategy, the bank has seen increased productivity, operations have been resized and optimised according to seasonal requirements and other specific needs, the service has become more agile, and robotic process management (RPM) has reduced processing errors. The overall quality of service and, most importantly, customer satisfaction, has seen a notable increase.

The successful rollout led the bank to entrust Konecta with an even larger share of its B2B and B2C offering, covering risk management, financial services, customer service, banking operation, collections, and marketing and sales among a host of other operations. This now represents more than 1,500 of its employees working across different markets.