Logicpath Insights

Toyota originally pioneered the process to identify “waste” that could be removed in order to optimize efficiency in their industry. The seven areas of waste in banking can be used to help you identify and eliminate current inefficiencies in your cash operations.

Learn how waste of time and resources can be highly interruptive to the efficiency of your customer service model in your FI because your staff is performing administrative work as opposed to high value tasks such as supporting and selling to your customers.

Delays in your financial institution can come in many forms, and are sometimes inevitable. Cash orders can be delayed from an unexpected transportation change or because a holiday falls on a scheduled delivery day. In addition, there are other delays that can be caused when a branch does not place their cash order on time.

Circumstances change over time that determine your goals, and lost opportunities can emerge as a result. The negative impact and expense from lost opportunities are hard to track, yet they are all too real. For example, having too little cash can mean you miss out on the opportunity to minimize armored car deliveries, thus saving on transportation costs. On the contrary, having excess cash equates to large amounts of money sitting idle when it could have been reinvested to create a profit.

As we often say, it is important to think of your cash like a grocery store would think of a box of cereal, such as Cornflakes… they’re both inventory and should be treated the same way. Having too much or too little inventory can be detrimental to your customers and your financial institution. However, inventory errors can and do occur, which create waste in the cash ordering process within your bank or credit union.

When people think about inefficient communication within an organization, they automatically think about delays between emails, phone calls, etc., but what is the true cost of inefficient communication? Inefficient communication can have many detrimental effects on your financial institution’s overall efficiency that result in waste in the form of time and money. When communication is ineffective or erroneous, it leads to extra internal and external emails, phone calls, report pulling, and additional charges.

Banks and credit unions do not often consider the risk or expense associated with unnecessary cash movement around their network. The truth is, there can be a significant amount of waste hidden in the process of moving cash to and from your institution and cash points.

In our last blog, we discussed areas of waste in financial institutions that often go undetected. It’s important to remember that “waste” can be defined as inefficiencies in processes. Next, we will begin to break down each of the seven areas that waste can lurk in operational processes of a bank or credit union. The first area is caused by inaccurate cash inventory levels.

You may not be aware of the 7 forms of waste in the manufacturing industry, first defined by Toyota; but what about banking where manufacturing waste isn’t relevant? In this blog series we explore 7 areas of waste in banking that occur in the cash inventory management process and how you can identify them to improve your efficiency.