830
employees over 50 branches
$7.45 billion
in assets
86%
adoption rate
Summary
- Southside Bank created a central hub for document management, reducing emails, phone calls, and papers.
- Using forms, employee productivity increased, as did customer satisfaction.
- Onboarding was streamlined, and a more connected sense of community was felt throughout the financial organization.
About Southside Bank
Southside Bank has proudly served the people of Texas since 1960, remaining committed to helping individuals, businesses, and nonprofits in the community. Headquartered in Tyler, Texas, Southside Bank has approximately $7.45 billion in assets—with 56 branches serving local communities in East, North, Central, and Southeast Texas. Southside Bank employs 830 individuals.
The problem: lack of automation and user-friendly intranet system
Prior to becoming an Intranet Connections (IC) customer in 2017, Southside Bank relied more on manual processes. They had partially launched a SharePoint intranet but also relied heavily on paper, emails, and phone calls. Because of the myriad of different communication methods, Southside searched for efficiencies to streamline employee tasks to enhance its products and services for its customers. Ensuring that documents were managed in a simple, user-friendly, and secure way was paramount for Southside Bank.
In addition, due to the large size of its employee headcount, as well as its vast geographical service area, Southside found it challenging to engage employees, streamline communication across all regions, and ensure employees were up to date on news and events.
With that in mind, Southside Bank began its search for a banking intranet that would streamline and standardize processes, that would also enhance and expand communication across the Bank.
The solution: Intranet Connections’ banking intranet software
Change and system overhauls are never easy in any organization, and ensuring high adoption rates on a banking intranet can seem like an uphill battle. Still, IC’s software checked every box Southside Bank was looking for, and our team was happy to help and share best practices and tips to achieve their goals.
IC’s banking intranet software provided Southside Bank with a new central document hub and added another layer of content security by placing essential documents and communications on one easily tracked medium. IC’s software is built to reduce the number of emails, phone calls, and paper, while breaking down silos and empowering employees to connect with other teams and departments within the organization.
Southside Bank was a big fan of IC’s forms feature on their new banking intranet, with built-in capabilities that inform and alert key individuals in the approval process and ensure that the correct submission ends up with the right person. They also created web-based apps to help onboard new hires, share company news, simplify the sign-up processes for volunteer events, as well as an area where employees can access the various websites for which Single-Sign-On (SSO) is enabled.
The onboarding process was simplified for the Southside Bank team thanks to IC’s support. The team from Intranet Connections was with them every step of the way to design and build a banking intranet that closely aligned with their external branding. In the end, what they found was a system that was intuitive to use and was easily governed by each department. They launched in 2017, aptly naming their new intranet “The Hub,” with essentially immediate results!
The result: secure, efficient banking intranet software
Flash forward five years from launch, and Southside Bank still sees high levels of employee engagement on their banking intranet—between 82-86% in any given month, with the majority of employees using the intranet’s form features, reading company news, and finding essential updates on operations.
With over 200 pages of content and over 2,000 forms, apps, and documents—The Hub quickly became Southside Banks’s primary source for finding information, connecting employees to a repository of important documents, and a way to fill out forms that increased efficiency. All these forms and pages serve a simple and single ultimate purpose; to streamline the work processes of the 830 employees at Southside without having to rely on manual processes. Various departments are able to create and manage their own page and forms, making the governance and maintenance of The Hub a team effort, yet easy to control.
Document management: say goodbye to paper, emails, and missing files
Southside Bank now no longer relies on multiple forms of communication to send documents to the right teams and individuals, as hundreds of documents now live on their banking intranet. When an employee needs a document, they simply log into The Hub and either navigate to the correct departmental site where the document lives or use the search tool to find the exact document they are looking for in a matter of seconds. They even have a page of “Quick Access Links” which contains commonly used forms and resources that employees can access with literally one click.
Many of Southside Bank’s documents have over 600 views per month, highlighting just how much employees have come to rely on The Hub for taking care of their customers, and each other!
“Our banking intranet is not only user friendly, it has also eliminated siloes and increased efficiency for our team. We’ve also been really impressed with the level of engagement and support we’ve experienced with the team at IC. It’s great to know that our success is taken seriously.”
Steven Campbell, VP of Communications, Southside Bank
Enhancing onboarding with a banking intranet
New hires joining the Southside Bank team are instantly familiarized with The Hub, as there is a dedicated “new hire” landing page, which features all the important information a new hire will need to know. This page can also be used by the existing employees of Southside Bank to see who has recently joined the organization.
Onboarding can be a time and money-consuming process, but having a central hub for all the most important documents, policies, and procedures new employees must know not only makes the processes quicker and more productive—it begins building muscle memory for new employees, ensuring high adoption rates well into the future!
Building a stronger, more connected community
With 830 employees spread over 56 locations, Southside Bank wanted to make everyone feel part of a connected community—and The Hub provided a great way to do just that! Here are a few community-building features Southside Bank has implemented on their banking intranet to bring everyone closer together:
- A “compliment corner,” where teammates can give colleagues recognition for the entire company to see and celebrate
- A birthday widget on the homepage so no one’s birthday is missed
- A widget for recognizing employee anniversaries
- Motivational pages for employees to share stories, engage with one another, and encourage one another
- Forms so employees can sign up for upcoming volunteer events quickly and easily
Southside Bank is rooted in the Texas communities it serves. With their banking intranet, they can ensure that they give back to the community and connect people with a greater purpose through volunteer events.
Learn how you can also see measurable results from a banking intranet with IC
Find out for yourself how IC’s banking intranet software can drive efficiency, security, and community as it did for Southside Bank by booking a demo with our team!