Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) Bank

The business…

Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) is a state-owned institution and has been widely acknowledged as Portugal's leading banking institution for 129 years.

Today, CGD is a modern financial-services group coping with new challenges in the form of domestic and overseas competition, as well as with the emergence of global markets and new ways of doing business, and the only bank in Portugal with this type of shareholder structure.

Its main corporate mission is to maximize shareholder value and, no less importantly, sustain a leading role in promoting growth and fostering innovation in the domestic market.

That mission requires several strategic aspects to be achieved, such as:

Making continuous improvements to its core retail banking business, as the bank preferred by 5 million customers.

Providing quality of service and customizing operations to customer needs by providing tailor-made products and services.

Enhancing penetration, targeting sectors with growth and profit potential.

Maintaining the highest professional and ethical standards in the running of its business.

What CGD are doing…

CGD is the largest Portuguese financial group, with the highest domestic market shares in key areas such as customer deposits (30.3% at the end of 2004), loans and advances to customers (22%), mortgages (11.6%), insurance (19.6%), mutual funds (19.1%), and real estate leasing (14.4%).

CGD has been engaged in committing substantial human and financial resources to innovative technological initiatives. It has also focused on the implementation of a new strategic cycle, dominated by such pioneering initiatives as electronic distribution channels, Caixa Directa on-line (Internet banking), Caixa e-Banking (corporate Internet banking), CaixaNet (IT infrastructure), CaixaWeb (CGD Group's "dot.com" company) and Bolsa Caixa Imobiliário (an e-business specialized in real estate and home loans).

How Echopark is helping…

As part of these technological initiatives and aligned to the strategy of adapting and growing in the ever more competitive financial environment whilst maintaining a customer centric approach, Echopark (through CGD's Implementation Partner PwC Consulting, now IBM) developed a strategic change programme for e-HR / e-Services consisting of:

B2E portal development

Change management

Business Process Re-engineering

E-Learning system implementation (LCMS)

Initially, a business case was developed to identify and evaluate the strategic and commercial drivers for the business change, as well as the potential options and recommendations. With this, Board endorsement and funding was secured for the Business Transformation and System Implementation.

The change and transformation activities included the:

Design and implementation of transition processes (from existing ways of working)

Development of future business processes

Design of supporting IT systems functionality

Design of transition and future organisational and governance structure

Communications management and stakeholder engagement

One of the successful strategies used to facilitate the acceptance of the business change was the design and implementation of processes for reward, training and development and knowledge management.

Another fundamental tool used to embed the business change, was effective and continual communications to the key stakeholders within the organisation and the collaborative approach taken with them for strategic decision making. Every key decision, was, then, owned and endorsed by the Business.

From a bottom line perspective, Echopark also developed projections for ROI. ROI measures were delivered in 2 streams; Immediate to medium-term ROI (up to 1 year) and Long-term ROI (up to 5 years). The calculations took account of the entire value chain of the business - not just internal HR. As such the business impact on suppliers and customers were considered vital, as the overall goal was bottom line performance. The identification of suppliers and customers in this case was directed towards additional businesses within the group, such as insurance companies. HR processes such as collaboration, self-service, speed to competence, resourcing and just-in-time information were seen as key factors that influenced business performance.

Organisational, business and process changes, supported by technology, were successfully implemented and helped maintain CGD's competitive strength and prominence in European financial markets.

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