Process Variation as a Determinant of Bank Performance: Evidence from the Retail Banking Study
研究零售银行分支机构的流程绩效与财务表现的关系，发现流程差异对特定客户群的影响可能比整体流程改进更重要。
This paper explores the relation between retail banks' branch-based processes and financial performance. There are 11 processes included in this study, which represent the bulk of the activities performed in a typical retail branch (e.g., opening checking accounts). The first finding of this study is that the financial performance of banks that perform better across these processes tend to be better than that of other banks. In addition to the variation in process performance across banks, there is also substantial variation across processes within banks. That is, banks that performed well in one process often performed quite badly in another. We present an analytical model that shows that improvement in process variation can be more important than improvement in aggregate process performance when dealing with certain customer segments. Empirical evidence from the Wharton Financial Institution Center Retail Banking Study of bank holding companies in the United States provides support.