One of North America’s leading diversified financial services companies was staring down a familiar reality. Across Operations, Customer Service, BSA and Fraud, teams spent hours copying and keying data into systems. Decentralized information held them back from making informed decisions. Manual processes lacked coordination standards. Errors, delays, compliance risk, and confusion were on the rise.
The bank had already delivered several automations along with a stalled attempt to stand up an automation program. As a result, their governance model was not built to keep pace with the projected 30% increase in customer onboarding volume over the next year. Without a consistent way to build and prioritize pipeline, estimate value, and measure ROI, the bank would continue to scale the same friction that was already slowing them down.
Ashling stepped in with a Discovery Diagnostic designed to create that starting point: assess readiness for change, surface early wins, introduce new technologies and capabilities to support a BOAT framework within their stack, and build a qualified automation pipeline tied directly to business value.
We started by aligning with executives on the bank’s core value drivers—product revenue, employee ramp up time, customer retention and experience—and translating them into clear automation objectives:
From there, we conducted surveys and interviews to capture SME and stakeholder input across four automation readiness dimensions: governance, change management, process maturity, and technology infrastructure. These insights clarified what was working today, what was creating friction, and where targeted development was needed to build a scalable automation program foundation.
In parallel, use case exploration sessions with department leaders helped surface 43 automation candidates across Operations, Fraud, Customer Experience, and IT. Of those, half were prioritized for delivery, representing more than $6M in potential value.
Ashling then translated those opportunities into a 12-month roadmap that balances long-term program value with near-term wins. The plan combines foundational work, like establishing operating and governance models and refining idea intake procedures for scale, with delivery initiatives that create immediate value.
One of these processes — the Branch Drawer Balance Variance automation — runs across 52 branches, impacts more than 300 employees, and delivers roughly $150K in value by saving 1,140 hours each month. More importantly, it gives tellers and managers accurate, day-by-day variance data to support fair performance reviews and escalation when needed. Previously, tellers could be “dinged” when a cash drawer did not balance at end of day, even if the money was recovered later, creating unnecessary friction and noise. Automating variance tracking reduces that risk, improves visibility into teller performance, and supports retention in a talent-scarce environment.
For banks early in their automation journey, the challenge is not a lack of ideas, it is a lack of a repeatable way to prioritize. Without a clear method to qualify value, estimate effort, and align work to executive objectives, automation becomes reactive and hard to scale.
As the bank approaches the $10B asset threshold, the stakes rise with higher reporting scrutiny and additional regulatory oversight. At the same time, as demand grows, manual processes multiply, data splinters across teams and systems, and errors and rework increase, resulting in slower cycles, higher regulatory risk, and disjointed employee and customer experiences.
Acquisition-driven growth stress-tests an organization. Integrating new franchises forces hard questions: which processes are truly standardized, where data breaks down, and whether teams can absorb demand without simply adding headcount.
That is why the Discovery Diagnostic mattered. It gave the bank a clear baseline of readiness, a qualified pipeline tied to business outcomes, and a practical roadmap leadership could get behind, while establishing a foundation built for scalability. With standardized automations and governance in place, newly acquired entities can plug into a consistent operating model faster, reducing integration friction and helping the bank scale execution and compliance without reinventing workflows each time.