Act On Your Branch Growth Data Plan Before It’s Too Late!

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When you go to the grocery store, and you see those ripe, crisp apples at their peak of freshness, you buy a bunch with every intention to consume them over the next day or so.

You put them in a bowl, on the counter, but if they go unattended, they begin to stale, go past their peak freshness, eventually going rotten.

In the world of banking, data and apples are one in the same. When delivered they are fresh. If left alone, they begin to stale with each passing day.

If you are a banking executive looking to grow and you are given fresh data, do you intend to do something with it, or will you just watch it rot?

When you hire a firm like LEVEL5 to assess your current and potential growth markets, you are given irrefutable data points and a 10-year proforma back-tested at 96% accuracy.

When looking to de-risk decisions, you can’t really have more confidence in the black and white, binary numbers to help support your decisions. But that data has a shelf life.

Strike the iron is while it’s still hot. Otherwise, you may miss out on real growth potential because as time ticks on, your data becomes stale, all the while, your competition will likely be making their moves.

Let’s say you receive the data and you don’t act on it for 6 months…that’s 6 months you could’ve been making progress, now lost.

Can your institution really afford to be behind for so long?

To illustrate the real implications of inactivity, we’re highlighting some vital junctures where taking steps soon on your fresh credit union and community bank consulting analytics can have a huge impact on your future.

3 Ways Current & Valid Data Assist Your Overall Growth

Change is the only constant, and how you fare rests on the ability to adapt accordingly.

That goes for branch networks too, one of your major avenues for gaining and maintaining the desired clientele.

Visualize your branch network as an ever-adapting entity, acclimating to the winds of change in market viability and customer demographics. You need to play this strategy correctly and decisively to win out.

In this state of flux, accurate analysis for fruitful future steps can certainly be made, but lingering on current quality data longer and longer places your organization further and further behind in making highly effective moves for your network’s viability.

There are 3 pivotal ways to optimize your network, but acting on your current data analysis is highly time sensitive in order to reap the rewards:

1 – Opening New Branches In The Right Areas

With accurate market and demographic analysis aligned with your specific goals, you understand the logic and purpose behind opening up new branches in high-quality locations. You don’t want to let solid direction pass you by here, as you’ll be missing out on prime locations that will be building up your clientele portfolio and holdings. Worse yet, a savvy competitor may beat you to saturating a market before you can.

Watch our video on Northeast Credit Union where we helped them grow into new places with informed market analysis.

2 – Closing Underperforming Branches

Branches that are repeatedly in the negative need to be closed and waiting too long means they’ll keep pulling valuable resources from your organization, resources that could be reutilized for growth.

Don’t worry, closing a branch is not the end of the world, in fact, it’s just par for the course. Similar to retail environments, this is just part of the evolution. Their absence can be made up for in spades with your new locations that are prime for future performance.

Do you act soon and save resources based on your valid data? Or do you wait to see what happens while running a real risk of detriment to your institution?

3 – Crafting Your New Branch Prototype

Your prototype works on so many levels to drive your institution into the future and holding back in its implementation sets you back even further.

A world-class prototype design accounts for everything needed to make a success including, but not limited to:

A floor plan to facilitate employee and member interaction
A modern appearance that solidifies you as a leader in your market
Branding consistent with your culture and values
An easily repeatable and malleable design for effective, rapid deployment

When you meticulously create a new branch prototype, you’re laying the foundation for attracting new members and offering excellent quality experiences for years to come. This design is carefully crafted and tailored meet the needs of your clientele’s unique demographics as well as to accommodate for the future of financial institution needs.

Consider the following if you’re hesitant to put your prototype into action:

Why go through all that upfront work creating the next generation of your institution, just to never use it?

What optimal land in the market will you place your new state-of-the-art branch prototype on if it’s already been gobbled up by your competitor?

It’s undeniably important to start rolling out the new face and space of your institution before it becomes just an idea lost to time. Both your clientele and stakeholders will greatly value the exciting new look, feel, and functionality of your newly-built or updated branches.

Don’t Let Success Pass By Your Organization

You’re truly doing yourself a disservice by waiting too long to act on quality data, plain and simple.

LEVEL5 visualizes Actionable Data as one of our 5 Elements of a Branch Transformation Playbook and we dissect your data to purposefully point you in the right direction for meaningful, lasting expansion through branch optimization.

Contact our team today for a 10-year pro-forma based on your performance metrics so you can make the most of your institution’s time.

The clock is ticking…