Bridging Data and Strategy to Unlock Branch Profitability

For decades, banking has been shifting from “bricks to clicks” as more customers opt for digital banking and banks recognize the need to deliver services digitally.

But make no mistake, branches remain essential. Two-thirds (67%) of consumers value having branches in their neighborhoods, viewing them as symbols of stability and availability — a sentiment consistent across all age groups. Branches continue to drive customer acquisition and retention, accounting for as much as 60% of new-to-bank sales. While digital channels expand, physical branches maintain a critical role in cross-selling products and fostering long-term relationships, directly impacting profitability.

Data analytics is now central to optimizing branch performance, equipping banks with the tools to track and improve key metrics such as sales conversion rates, transaction costs, and customer volume. By analyzing these metrics in real-time, CEOs can align branch operations with broader profitability goals, while branch managers can gain actionable insights to optimize staffing, elevate service, and motivate employees.

Breaking Down Barriers

Evaluating branch performance is challenging when banks rely on static month-end metrics, siloed data, and limited actionable insights. Traditional measures, such as foot traffic or transaction volume, fail to capture a branch’s full contribution to customer acquisition and profitability, while fragmented data across channels creates inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

For instance, when branch staff lack visibility into a customer’s digital banking activity, they miss the chance to provide personalized service. Similarly, without integrated data, CEOs struggle to identify underperforming branches or regions, delaying critical decisions. Celent’s ongoing Branch Transformation Research underscores the importance of breaking down these data silos and leveraging real-time insights to create a unified performance view — empowering both executives and branch managers to make informed, impactful decisions.

Unifying Channels for Better Insights

Banks can begin to address these challenges by unifying data across channels, creating a single source of truth for customer and operational insights. An enterprise analytics platform like KlariVis delivers real-time data insights, bridging gaps between physical branches, digital channels, and departments. A comprehensive dashboard empowers both executives and branch managers to make informed decisions that drive efficiency and profitability, enhance customer satisfaction, and get as granular as they want with the data.

To effectively evaluate branch performance, banks must track key metrics across profitability, customer experience, and operations. Profitability metrics, such as revenue per branch and the cost-to-income ratio, provide a clear picture of how each branch contributes to the bottom line. Customer experience metrics, including satisfaction scores and wait times, reveal how well branches meet client needs and foster loyalty. Operational metrics, such as transaction volume and employee efficiency, offer insight into branch productivity and pinpoint areas for improvement. Leadership plays a vital role in this process: CEOs align priorities with strategic goals, while branch managers focus on the actionable targets.

Leveraging Analytics to Optimize Performance

Bank data analytics is a powerful driver of branch and employee improvement, allowing banks to optimize staffing, benchmark performance, and identify growth opportunities. Analytics ensures branches are staffed efficiently to meet customer demand, enables performance comparisons across locations, and highlights operational enhancement opportunities. Not to mention, executives can track the impact their decisions have in real time.

This data-driven approach supports strategic goals at all levels, helping CEOs implement growth and consolidation strategies while equipping branch managers with tools to improve efficiency. By harnessing analytics, banks can achieve higher productivity, streamlined operations, and better customer experiences.

In addition, the impact that positive reinforcement and the employee recognition that analytics can deliver cannot be overstated. As one bank CEO recently shared, “I get to start my morning looking for a reason to say ‘good job’ to someone. KlariVis helps me celebrate my team, and has been a huge cultural driver in the bank.” By leveraging data to highlight achievements and recognize staff contributions, banks can foster a positive workplace culture that motivates employees and aligns them with organizational goals. Celebrating successes based on real-time insights not only improves morale but also drives performance, ensuring that teams remain engaged and focused on delivering exceptional results.

Branches — still! — undeniably serve as important customer acquisition and relationship building centers: It is imperative for banks to track key metrics, leverage data-driven insights, and align leadership priorities to make decisions that will optimize branch performance. The right analytics empower executives to steer strategic initiatives and branch managers to implement operational improvements to build stronger, more efficient branches.