With GMT Planet-the company's flagship workforce management solution-in use throughout BB&T's network of approximately 1,500 financial center offices, the company achieved their goal of adopting a highly efficient and flexible staffing and scheduling model without sacrificing their earned reputation for stellar client service. After only the first four months following GMT Planet deployment and adopting the new workforce operating model, BB&T reported benefits of approximately 5% in annual teller labor savings alone, achieved through natural employee attrition. The bank is also gradually increasing the ratio of part-time tellers to drive further efficiencies and expects cost savings to exceed 15% annually in the future.

"After taking all factors into consideration, we came to the conclusion that GMT Planet was the clear winner, offering the most complete and flexible solution that was not only the most attractive in terms of investment payback period, but also in terms of other key factors, such as ease of implementation and impact to the financial centers," said John Charles Thompson, BB&T's EVP of Branch Operations. "GMT has truly delivered on their promises-we've been able to meet our aggressive cost-cutting targets to date while maintaining our service quality by having the right people, in the right place, at the right time. As we continue to phase-in our increasingly flexible staffing model, we expect to deliver the same high level of service throughout our entire financial center office network with significantly fewer FTEs, eventually representing very significant bottom line labor cost savings in excess of 15 percent annually without impacting our ability to deliver high-quality customer service."

A strong and stable bank with over 30,000 employees in the Carolinas, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, and Washington, D.C., BB&T ranks among the top 15 bank holding companies in the US in terms of total assets, largely due to the company's aggressive acquisition strategy. With the changing dynamics of the industry-combined with industry benchmarking data revealing higher than average financial center office teller utilization-the organization turned to workforce optimization to shrink labor costs in the branch. Post-deployment customer satisfaction surveys and other feedback tools validated that BB&T's high client satisfaction scores remained unchanged after shifting to the new GMT-enabled workforce operating model.

"As the financial services industry looks for ways to weather the current economic storm, banks are struggling with how to run as lean as possible without negatively impacting the customer experience and revenues as they attempt to navigate to safer ground," commented Simon Angove, GMT's chief executive officer. "As this pressure continues to mount, institutions like BB&T are learning that now may be the best time to invest in workforce optimization technologies like GMT Planet. As BB&T demonstrates, reducing costs and boosting service quality are not necessarily conflicting goals. With an investment in GMT Planet, they can truly realize the best of both worlds by ensuring that they operate as efficiently and nimbly as possible by making the absolute most of their existing resources."