Schwyzer Kantonalbank

When banks undertake transformation projects, it is critical to develop and implement concrete initiatives to drive success. Those initiatives need to meaningfully develop the business and fulfill the company's values (here: purpose).

The client

With 23 branches, Schwyzer Cantonal Bank (SZKB) is the leading bank in the canton of Schwyz. Thanks to its state guarantee, strong equity ratio, high profitability, risk-conscious growth and consistency-focused business policy, SZKB is one of the strongest cantonal banks and one of the best-rated financial institutions anywhere.

Context

To ensure the bank's success in the future, the Bank Council and Executive Board began developing the overall bank strategy "2023ff" in February 2021.

The various Hotz business units accompanied the entire development process through phases 1: strategy development, 2: strategy anchoring and 3: strategy realization.

In phases 2 and 3 of this process, Hotz transformation specialists supported SZKB in identifying and developing effective initiatives to meet the strategic requirements of the Bank Council.

Hotz takes a holistic approach to transformation projects. The focus is on joint implementation and integrated collaboration with the client. We often work with our clients on critical strategy and business portfolio issues. In the case of SZKB, we focused on cross-business area initiatives.

Any strategy is only as good as the change it brings about in the organization and its business units. The top priority is to identify strategic, operational, organizational and financial levers that promise to produce a rapid, positive effect on the selected initiatives (e.g., by means of a benefit analysis).

1 - Guided by this idea, around 30 strategic fields of action were analyzed and comprehensively evaluated in terms of their impact.

2 – During this analysis and evaluation, bank employees participated in several collaborative full-day workshops. These succeeded in identifying 14 concrete strategic initiatives and preparing them for adoption by the Bank Council.

3 - The bank employees were supported by experts from Hotz's Transformation + Metrics team in such a way that all issues relevant for the realization of the initiatives could be synthesized on factsheets.

4 – The management team subsequently prioritized the initiatives based on business impact, ROI and fulfillment of purpose and principles.

5 - Following this process, all initiatives were quantified in terms of costs and benefits and given concrete objectives. Furthermore, "lighthouses" were identified for the upcoming strategy phase.

6 – These lighthouses are particularly crucial for the effective realization of the strategy as they can transform SZKB's strategic objectives into appreciation among the target groups in a particularly effective way.

The strategic initiatives translate the defined requirements into concrete measures. The resulting summaries were formulated precisely so that the initiatives could be implemented immediately after their release. The lighthouses receive special attention so that they can develop to their full differentiation potential.

Based on the developed utility analysis and the identified KPIs, the success of the defined strategic initiatives and their actions can be measured and monitored on an ongoing basis — and readjusted by means of appropriately defined follow-up measures.