Change is constant in the financial services industry. Rates fluctuate. Offers are altered. Campaigns are launched for credit cards, deposits, mortgages, small businesses, and commercial enterprises. Banks must adapt quickly to stay competitive. BBVA Compass is no exception. Yet, because the bank’s web team received requests and collaborated via email and spreadsheets, it continually missed important publishing dates. When the web team looked for a better way to manage its work, BBVA Compass discovered Adobe Workfront. Now Workfront provides requestors and web team employees with real-time project visibility that saves time and meets business needs.

BBVA Compass is a Sunbelt-based financial institution that operates 672 branches across Texas, Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Colorado, and New Mexico, and commercial and private client offices throughout the United States. BBVA Compass ranks among the top 25 largest U.S. commercial banks based on deposit market share. It is a subsidiary of BBVA Compass Bancshares Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of BBVA.

The web team is responsible for all updates to the bank’s online presence in the United States — from simple updates to keep mortgage rates current to quarterly marketing campaigns with multiple landing pages. The web team also supports project requests from the bank’s analytics group.

Ineffective tools to manage hundreds of requests

Within BBVA Compass, the job of keeping the bank’s digital property current is the responsibility of a 10-person web team, which includes developers, designers, project managers, and a traffic manager. Yet the team consistently missed targeted publish dates because project requests coming from more than 150 different requestors across the bank’s lines of business were sent via email and managed in an Excel spreadsheet.

If a project was more complex than a rate change, the requestor would also have to complete an online web form in Wufoo. The request and the form would then be emailed to the designer or developer assigned to the project. As the project progressed, the requestor and the web team would email questions and comments, reviews, and approvals, back and forth until the project was complete.

“The Excel spreadsheet contained more than 100 total requests at any given time, but there was no tracking, so no one stayed on schedule,” says Maryland Tracy, Web Traffic Manager at BBVA Compass. “When we worked in Excel, it was extremely hard to meet a project’s scheduled publish date!”

Lengthy meetings increased non-productive time

To keep up with the high volume of requests, web team members participated in lengthy meetings nearly every day. It wasn’t uncommon for designers and developers to regularly participate in several one-hour meetings every week, in addition to a few 30-minute meetings. “It seemed like our team members were in meetings most of the day,” Tracy recalls. “With the volume of requests we were receiving continuing to grow, we knew we needed a better solution for our team.”

Time-consuming audit preparation

Audits were also inefficient. Industry regulations require the bank data security team to conduct regular audits of web team processes. To comply, the traffic manager had to save every email containing a content request (plus associated Word documents and images), every email sent for review, every email with corrections, and every email containing an approval. “We had so many requests that I set up folders to match our workflow process, and then I had to archive them weekly to save my email from crashing,” recalls Tracy. “It was overwhelming, which is why I began researching project management solutions."

The Workfront solution

The BBVA Compass web team had five primary requirements for a new solution: that it be cloud-based, have robust project management capabilities, integrate with the bank’s existing ProofHQ tool for image collaboration, and include tracking and reporting features. After evaluating nine different solutions online, BBVA Compass narrowed its decision to three — Adobe Workfront, Mavenlink, and Work Zone. After reviewing the three companies’ online demos, the team invited Workfront to the bank headquarters for a demonstration.

Tracy says, “Our whole team sat through the Workfront demo and it was clearly the easiest to use and the right system for BBVA. Our manager, who had prior experience with Basecamp, said, ‘Workfront looks amazing.’”

Rapid implementation

After selecting Workfront, BBVA Compass required all web team members to participate in fundamental Workfront online or instructor-led training. Project managers were required to attend additional project management training. Simultaneously, Tracy began documenting the team’s workflow processes and team members began to try Workfront in a sandbox environment. Shortly thereafter, a Workfront consultant was onsite for two weeks to ensure a successful transition to the production environment. The consultant was particularly helpful in explaining the creation of projects, setting up request queues, and establishing request rules.

“The consulting experience was great because we were working our process into the platform, which allowed us to move into production immediately,” says Tracy. “Entering new project requests and tasks was the easy part. What was more difficult was the two weeks it took me to get all 101 projects out of the Excel spreadsheet that I hated and into Workfront where I could track and report on them.”

Personalized work views and protections

Today, all BBVA Compass web team employees and more than 200 requestors (with more coming online every day) are collaborating more effectively on the 1,000 projects a year managed in Workfront. Designers, developers, and project managers each have a personalized work area that details which projects of theirs are high, urgent, or executive urgent in priority. Because all comments and questions — to and from requestors and web team members — are tracked in the appropriate project rather than in email, communication has dramatically improved.

The solution also increases overall team productivity because when an incomplete initial request comes into the web traffic manager, she can send it back for more information. For example, asking the requestor for the URL of the page where a change needs to be made on the 1,000-page site. More accurate project details save assigned designers and developers from potential work interruptions that take time to resolve.

“Our team members love Workfront because they just want to know what they should be working on when they come in for the day,” explains Tracy. “Workfront has also saved them a significant amount of time because the back and forth in email has stopped, and their days are no longer full of interruptions, trying to find what they need to complete a task. Everything is in Workfront for team members to start work, finish tasks, and move on to the next project.”

Additionally, web team members can more effectively meet marketing requests through the seamless, out-of-the-box integration of ProofHQ digital proofing with Workfront projects, people, and tasks. The proofing feature includes intuitive commenting and annotation tools for clear and accurate feedback on over 150 file types, including print, web, interactive, email, video, and more. Projects stay on track and revisions remain in Workfront.

“Everything is visible in Workfront. Transparency increases requestor confidence and web team satisfaction while reducing stress,” says Tracy. “We worked in Excel before Workfront and never met a publish date. Now, everything is on schedule.”

Within Workfront, BBVA Compass system administrators have set preferences and groups that contain certain projects. Segmenting projects enables internal team members to ensure they are only viewing what is most important to them. In the case of the analytics team, it also means only those team members with permissions have access to sensitive data. Setting protections also helps the bank better secure intellectual property while extending the solution to external partners, such as contract writers and SEO experts.

Streamlined audits and reporting

Before new content can be published on the BBVA Compass website, it must be approved by the requestor and line-of-business, as well as legal and compliance. Workfront has streamlined the approval process by capturing requests, reviews, and approvals in a single system instead of in multiple emails per project.

“The approval process is simple and we now have an audit trail for everything we do,” explains Tracy. “Our compliance and legal team members like the new process because Workfront is easy to search and time stamps of when and who approved something are captured within a project. Approvals are no longer sitting in my email inbox and I’ve eliminated busywork.”

BBVA Compass also uses the integrated Workfront reporting features to share a weekly report of project status with management. “Before there was really no way to report,” Tracy says. “Now, I can quickly run and easily share a weekly report with my manager to share with others. I can also rapidly run a report for audit that shows which lines of business request the most from our team.”

Benefits

Since deploying Workfront, the BBVA Compass web team is realizing significant benefits including:

• Regaining 20+ hours per week to accomplish work 10 web team members used to attend 1-hour project status meetings and 30-minute update meetings several times a week. Now they participate in just 1 project status update meeting for 30 minutes every Monday.
• Increasing team productivity by 3 hours per week Because all project collaboration is now coordinated in Workfront, emailing requests, reminders, edits, and approvals directly to web team members is no longer necessary. In addition to improving productivity, the web team has seen an 80% decrease in email since deploying Workfront, which it expects to also reduce archiving time and costs.
• Improving project throughput by 50% per day Greater visibility and transparency for requestors has resulted in fewer disruptions and increased focus for web team members. More accurate request templates also help team members accomplish more each day, reducing backlog and improving on-time delivery. As work speed has increased, so too, have the number of requests. By tracking all tasks in Workfront, the team is able to report on its success, which recently resulted in adding a new employee to the web team.
• Meeting 100% of publishing deadlines Publish dates were best guesses when the web team tracked projects in a spreadsheet. In Workfront, every task and project is now on a schedule and team members can accomplish the required work in time to meet all publishing dates.
• Saving time by eliminating email archiving from reporting processes By moving projects out of email and into Workfront, BBVA Compass has streamlined its reporting and audit processes. Legal and compliance are integrated into day-to-day work approval processes, and when required, the data security team can quickly and easily audit the team’s workflows.

“Workfront is an effective gatekeeper that saves us a tremendous amount of time,” concludes Tracy.

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