Branch Planning

The CACI approach to location planning in financial services typically involves two stages leading to the benchmarking of branches and modelling of sales and P& L by branch.

Benchmarking

Branches are benchmarked using a range of factors including:

	Market Databases - CACI's unique closed user market databases covering mortgage, savings, current account and personal loans market
	Branch Performance Indicators
	Catchments
	Customers
	Centres
	Competition
	Network Effect

After building the profile of the current estate we are then able to apply the analogues to potential new locations and identify the closest branches in the network, in terms of market potential/ similarity.

Additionally, CACI can wrap up the analysis into a branch reporting system, called ‘Network Knowledge’ – allowing you to produce a ‘Branch on a Page Portrait’ for each branch in the current network.

This approach will tell us whether the new locations are completely different to the current branch footprint, which is usually a good initial indicator of the potential of a new location.

Sales prediction and P&L Modelling

This stage goes beyond the analogue benchmark (which is really a measure of similarity) by creating a model that will predict sales at a given location. But we need to have completed stage 1, to ensure that all the data has been processed correctly and that we have picked up a detailed knowledge of your estate before we rush in and try to predict branch sales behaviour.

The key factors involved in building a sales model are both internal and external:

	Internal – Branch characteristics, such as size and layout of the branch, pitch and the network effect Britannia has in the area
	External – Local market characteristics, such as demographics, competition and type of town/ location

Once we have the sales predictions, we can produce a full financial justification, providing we know the capex (actual or likely), any increase in opex and the profitability of the products sold. We will use NPV (with a specified discount rate) and IRR to determine when and if a site will be profitable. The sales predictions will be derived from a sales model that we will build, calibrate and test against the current branches’ sales performance.

Field Sales Planning

Whether calling IFAs, businesses or high worth individuals it is vital that your field sales operations are organised as efficiently as possible. Any highly trained field sales team will have a high cost attached and it is in your interest that time is focused on sales calls rather than inefficient call patterns.

There are three main elements to effective planning of your field forces:

	Resource Planning - how many people do you need?
	Territory Planning - what is your ideal territory structure?
	Call Scheduling - in what order should your people undertake their calls?

Extra time with the customer can easily be created for your field force both through more balanced territory structures and by call schedules that minimise driving time. Click here to find out more about Financial Field Sales.

	Case Study: Sainsbury's Bank
	Case Study: Staffordshire Building Society
	Financial Field Sales
	Consumer Marketing: Financial Services
	Business Solutions