This had much to do with the recent smooth overhaul of the bank's international-trade business, which involved a change of "working platform" and job specifications of more than 500 staff.

"With this big change, the most difficult thing we've gone through is how to cope with staff. How to convince them to feel they are owners of this project not the victims. How to get their support," Kasikornbank executive vice president Boontuck Wungcharoen said last week.

Taking five years and costing more than Bt500 million, Kasikornbank launched its "trade innovation" service. The bank claims it offers first-of-its-kind integrated services for trade financing.

The new system guarantees shorter service times, provides individual advisers for each customer - in the same fashion as stockbrokers - and online trade-financing services.

Five years ago a dozen executives were chosen to be "strong leaders" to make trade financing one of the bank's core revenue-generating sources.

Bank senior vice president Boonyong Puapongsathorn was chosen as the key man at the international-trade department. He was sent to the United States for several months to study what could be applied to the new service here.

When he returned he held intensive workshops with 100 staff.

"We asked them to help design the system. Senior staff told of problems they had learnt from past experience," Boonyong said.

Three elements of the new service have affected the way staff work. International-trade service offices with "imaging work-flow technology" allow the bank to service customers at any of its international-trade centres - which will be extended to 50 from today's 30.

With imaging work-flow technology, customers know the name of the person who is dealing with their export collection, letters of credit and bills for collection within an hour of submitting documents for bank guarantees.

However, many bank officers will be relocated. For example, instead of 20 or more staff at one international-trade centre, there will now be three to five. Back-office work has been centralised at the Phaholyothin centre.

Trade-service specialists will be doubled to 60 by the end of the year. This will allow each customer to be advised individually.

Each specialist will know customer profiles and needs.

It is not easy to become a specialist. They have to have at least 15 years in banking. Using a training system from a top-five US bank, Kasikornbank set up its own "trade innovation" school, too.

New recruits spend the first three months in tuition and the second at on-the-job training.

Before becoming a specialist it takes another two to three years of experience. However, the school has helped to shorten the learning curve from as long as five years to eight months.

"The difficulty is that, for the past two years, more than one hundred staff have attended intense workshops as well as continued to perform their daily job. They didn't have a weekend," Boonyong said.

The third element sees customers able to access accounts with their computers. They can check real-time foreign-exchange rates, apply letters of credit, ask for money transfers and track the progress of transactions.

"The system allows senior executives to see how their staff are performing more clearly," Boontuck said. "And staff see how what they do contributes to customers. They now see how their work links to the customers and banks' benefit. This makes them proud. They used to feel ignored in the back office. Staff often complained they did not have enough to do."

He said staff were convinced the new trade innovations will work.

During the first weeks of the new platform they were inundated by customer calls wanting to know more about the new service.

The bank hopes it will be able to increase turnover from Bt1 trillion a year to Bt3 trillion over the next three years. The bank is No 2 in terms of volume at present.

Jiwamol Kanoksilp

The Nation