TLDR: Metro Bank, under the guidance of former CIO Louise Leavey, has achieved substantial financial savings through a process engineering turnaround utilizing Celonis’s process intelligence platform. Leavey, a proponent of ‘evolution’ over ‘transformation,’ emphasized a data-led approach to identify and optimize inefficiencies, leveraging Celonis to make process improvements measurable and transparent. The initiative highlights the critical role of aligning finance and technology and the growing impact of AI in business process optimization.
Metro Bank has successfully implemented a significant process engineering turnaround, leading to multi-million pound savings, spearheaded by its former Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Transformation, Louise Leavey. The initiative leveraged Celonis, a process intelligence and AI platform, to streamline operations and enhance efficiency across the bank. Leavey, a seasoned technology executive with over 35 years of experience, articulated her philosophy of ‘evolution’ rather than ‘transformation,’ aiming for continuous improvement that brings stakeholders along on the journey rather than instilling fear of job displacement.
Speaking at the Celonis Celosphere conference in Munich, Leavey highlighted how technologies like Celonis are redefining how financial institutions can simplify, automate, and evolve. Her approach begins with a comprehensive analytical mapping of an organization’s landscape, heat-mapping every process for cost, performance issues, and growth opportunities to pinpoint the biggest pain points.
This data-driven methodology is crucial for overcoming cultural resistance, a common hurdle in major programs. Leavey noted, ‘People want to do the things they like, the way they used to do them. But when you show them the numbers, and when you bring finance into the conversation, that changes everything.’ As a qualified accountant, Leavey stressed the indispensable role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in any technology program, stating, ‘If you haven’t got the CFO involved, you probably won’t get any money. But if you do, you can free up cash for innovation.’
An example of this financial acumen in action was her discovery of £5 million in annual spending on soon-to-be-retired systems at a previous organization. By finding an alternative supplier, Origina, she cut that cost in half, freeing up £2.5 million for reinvestment. Celonis’s process intelligence platform was instrumental in making such transformations measurable and transparent. Leavey, who has been involved in process re-engineering for 40 years, contrasted traditional methods with modern tools: ‘We used to spend months doing brown-paper mapping of every process. Now, with Celonis, it’s so much easier. You can show people what’s happening in real time.’
Metro Bank’s partnership with Celonis enables the bank to identify inefficiencies in its workflow, with Leavey emphasizing that ‘Process intelligence is about understanding everything in your business… It’s having that foundational level, being able to know all your processes across the whole organization.’ The Celonis platform allows CIOs to pinpoint productivity lags and apply intelligence to problems, such as automating manual processes like onboarding or managing critical applications like payments.
Leavey also highlighted the transformative impact of AI on the CIO role, describing her job as making business and technology speak the ‘same language.’ She underscored how AI and automation are already reshaping business operations, making process efficiency measurable in real-time. Her strategy consistently focuses on automation, utilizing tools like Celonis and early-stage AI companies to automate processes, thereby unlocking significant productivity opportunities for reinvestment in revenue growth, cost optimization, or customer satisfaction. She believes the most significant gains from AI are initially found in technology delivery and testing, leading to substantial savings within the IT stack and more productive, cleaner change delivery with fewer defects.
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Leavey, who recently departed Metro Bank and is set to announce her next role, has a proven track record of driving cost optimization, AI and data strategy implementation, and operational efficiency improvements that deliver measurable business value. Her work at Metro Bank exemplifies how strategic application of process intelligence and AI can lead to substantial financial benefits and a culture of continuous improvement.
