STRATEGY MAP: CUSTOMER-CENTERED SALES SAVINGS BANK

Sparkasse Rosenheim-Bad Aibling in the south of Bavaria, near Lake Chiemsee, employs around 730 people and is a strong partner at the side of regional businesses and households.

In the course of its orientation as a "customer-centered sales savings bank", Sparkasse Rosenheim-Bad Aibling has given itself a new target image. The aim is to ensure sustainable success in sales, which has changed increasingly over the years. To this end, all institute perspectives are to be designed in a customer-centric manner and thus aligned with the needs and preferences of customers. As a result of this target, the sales structure is being fundamentally redesigned, resulting in significant changes in tasks, responsibilities and organizational positioning for almost all employees.

To illustrate the complex interrelationships of these reorganization measures, the customer groups, their addressing, the requirements placed on sales and the internal perspectives were depicted in a dialog picture. At the same time, the future regional anchoring of the savings bank in the city and district of Rosenheim could be optimally underlined.

The dialog picture was developed during a joint workshop in Bad-Aibling. A dialog picture moderator and illustrator worked together with the project managers and executives on the sketch for the dialog picture. It became clear once again that discussions about what should be illustrated and to what extent are essential for creating a common understanding of the company's route. At the end of the eight-hour workshop, the dialog picture was in sketch form. In the weeks that followed, it was fleshed out by the dialog picture illustrators. An interactive version of the dialog picture was developed in parallel.

Via click points, users can work their way through the dialog picture and learn the technical background to the topics. Several click points are accompanied by real film clips in which the Savings Banks Board of Management and senior executives provide information on the background and objectives of the changes, thereby winning over and inspiring employees to join the company.

The dialog picture, including an interactive version, was rolled out to all employees. In a digital event, the Board of Management provided information about the upcoming changes at the savings bank, the new requirements and the future direction. In the further course of the project, the dialog picture or individual scenes from the dialog picture were referenced in all communication measures (e.g. project newsletters, presentations in management forums and team meetings in the individual departments). For this purpose, the provision of exempted individual scenes was an important support.

By consistently referring to the dialog picture, we succeeded in following a consistent thread in communication, thereby giving employees the greatest possible security in the change process.

In the future, the dialog picture will continue to be used to communicate the ideas of the realignment as a "customer-centric sales savings bank" both in central communications measures and in the management work of the units concerned. The dialog picture will thus remain an important component of Sparkasse Rosenheim-Bad Aibling's internal communications strategy in the long term.

Christian Abler

Head of Organization Department

"It was important to us to have as many employees as possible with us on the journey of change toward a customer-centric sales savings bank. Due to the diverse messages and complex dependencies that have arisen for many of our employees as a result of the vision of a customer-centric sales savings bank, we deliberately wanted to explore new avenues of communication. With the dialog picture, we tried to inform all employees in a striking and sustainable way without oversimplifying. Written or purely verbal communication did not seem suitable for this purpose.

In an interesting and entertaining development process with the executives involved in the project, we succeeded within a very short time in synchronizing and concretizing the ideas at management level and ultimately visualizing them expressively in the form of a dialog picture. The cooperation with the project management and the visualizer of DIALOGBILD was characterized by great mutual understanding and high commitment, so that in the end a result could be achieved that positively convinced the executives involved in the development process as well as the board of directors and the employees. Even the smallest details, such as the depiction of the region-specific costumes, were implemented to the best satisfaction as the level of detail of the dialog picture was gradually increased.

We consider the interactive version of the dialog picture, which cross-medially combines the playful visual language with sober written explanations but also videos of the management and upper management, to be particularly valuable. In this way, the dialog image not only serves to illustrate contexts in the short term, but can also be integrated into the change process in the long term. New employees can learn about the philosophy of the savings bank - change topics can be discussed in individual meetings and team rounds on the basis of the dialog picture and independently comprehended by the entire staff in an interactive form. In this way, the dialog picture was able to create a sustainable communication tool that, in addition to conveying information, also contributes to motivation and enthusiasm for the upcoming changes. We can therefore fully recommend the use of a dialog picture in major change processes."