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How Australia’s better big bank built the leadership capability, operational consistency and data foundation to innovate faster, grow and serve customers better
September 2026
35%
INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH THE PROGRAMME
A FURTHER
10%
YEAR ON YEAR
NEARLY 50%
FASTER TIME TO DECISION
1 DAY
DOCUMENT TURNAROUND
DATA-LED DECISIONS AT EVERY LEVEL
ONE PLATFORM USED ACROSS THE WHOLE BANK
ACTIVEOPS AS THE SINGLE OPERATIONAL TOOL ENTERPRISE-WIDE
AUTOMATION AND AI PART OF DAILY WORK
“Having ActiveOps as a partner, and the ability that therefore granted us to innovate, has been key.”
Paul Jamieson
GM Operational Excellence, Bendigo Bank
Stories from Bendigo Bank
Hear from Bendigo Bank leaders and managers on how a shared view of data helped them plan with confidence, lead with evidence and build the foundation to innovate.
The challenge: Building the capability to grow
Bendigo Bank has a deep connection to the communities it serves, particularly in regional and rural Australia. When the bank set out a new growth strategy, anchored first in productivity and deposit growth and built towards innovation and scale, the ambition was clear.
The question was how to grow without losing consistency and control.
“Securing customers has never been our problem. Actually being able to process them and scale up, we just couldn’t meet the potential customer growth opportunities that were out there for the bank.”
Paul Jamieson
GM Operational Excellence, Bendigo Bank
As the bank grew, it was running a number of systems and processes that had developed separately across different parts of the business. Teams weren’t using the same language when it came to performance, and that made it difficult to measure progress consistently or compare one team against another.
“Digital transformation is a foundational plank for innovation. It’s around building the digital tools that our customers need and want, while retaining the human touch. But from a longer-term perspective, probably more important is building the muscles in the organisation to be able to drive that digital innovation at pace.”
Gustav Lindstrom
Group Transformation Officer, Bendigo Bank
Key questions the bank needed to answer:
- How do we create a common language for performance across the bank?
- Where is effort actually flowing, and are resources in the right places?
- How do we give leaders the data to plan ahead rather than react?
- How do we prioritise automation and process improvement using operational evidence?
- How do we grow without growing our costs at the same rate?
- How do we extend this beyond operations to the rest of the bank?
- How do we use data to demonstrate value and support decisions at a leadership level?
The Solution
Bendigo Bank didn’t start with the software.
Before ActiveOps data could tell anyone anything useful, the bank had to agree what it was measuring. It ran BOOST, Bendigo Bank’s structured training and coaching programme, to establish the fundamentals first, the behaviours and shared language that had been missing, and only then activated ActiveOps on top of that groundwork.
“Bringing that Boost framework into action has really helped us embed the fundamentals to then activate the ActiveOps framework. On top of that, to help us understand the workload, the performance and the productivity that the leaders see on a day to day basis and respond to it was a journey for everyone, whether it is the direct frontline people, ops people, leaders, business leaders and the senior leaders. There was certainly a requirement for us to inform, consult and educate everyone.”
Shraddha Potay
Head of Workforce Management and Performance, Bendigo Bank
Rather than announcing a new system, the bank invested in explaining it, working through real scenarios so people could see for themselves what better planning and performance management would mean in practice. Team members were brought into the implementation itself, including the work of timing tasks, and asked for their feedback throughout, so the change was something they helped shape rather than something that happened to them.
What ActiveOps gave Bendigo Bank was a daily view of workload, performance and productivity that leaders could act on directly. Managers could see how much work was coming, how many people they needed to meet it, and where the strengths and gaps sat, turning planning from a reactive exercise into a proactive one.
The bigger unlock was consistency. Every team could now be measured the same way, making it possible to compare performance and move resource to where it was needed most.
The same data made process problems visible. Blockers that had previously gone unnoticed were surfaced and routed to team leaders and the process team to fix, and manual steps began falling away. That same visibility also gave the bank something to measure itself against beyond its own walls.
“ActiveOps has been key to help us mature the leadership capability and improve our productivity standards, to let us know what good looks like and to put us to the upper quartile level against our peers, and it was the benchmark by which we were to assess ourselves.”
Paul Jamieson
GM Operational Excellence, Bendigo Bank
The platform’s value showed up just as much in daily use. For leaders like Tess Rix, ActiveOps earned its place because it fit how her team actually worked, not the other way round. Over time it became the mechanism through which the bank developed its leaders, teaching them to reach for evidence rather than instinct when making a call.
“What I like about ActiveOps is I like how simple it is to use from a leader and from a team member perspective. I like that it can be fit for purpose, or make it work in different ways that will suit for you and your team. And then the data. What does the data tell me? And then how do I make better decisions?”
Tess Rix
Head of Mortgage Health and Collections, Bendigo Bank
Supporting Bendigo Bank’s Data, Automation and AI
With ActiveOps it became possible to see exactly where manual effort was concentrated and where blockers were slowing work down, surfacing problems that had previously gone unnoticed and sharing with the process team for improvement.
“Data is in the middle of everything for us today. The ecosystem is being enabled, whether it’s our team members, our ops leaders, our business leaders or our frontline people, to make decisions on behalf of the customers and lift that experience for them.”
Shraddha Potay
Head of Workforce Management and Performance, Bendigo Bank
Its value extended beyond operations: frontline leaders, business leaders and senior management could work from the same evidence, spot problems earlier and show progress across the bank over time.
That same data foundation is now extending into automation and AI. Manual processes are steadily moving away, and AI has become part of daily work rather than something being trialled.
“The fact that we have ActiveOps gives us a very rich starting point of having that data. It allows us to have the right conversations, make the right trade-offs, and also track the progress. Because we don’t know what we don’t know, but the temporal view of how the processes are changing is actually really powerful”, said Gustav Lindstrom
Group Transformation Officer, Bendigo Bank.
For Paul Jamieson, that shift raises a bigger question than what can simply be automated. The real opportunity, he says, is what AI can add for the customer directly, not just what it can take off a team’s plate.
“It’s not just about AI process and automation and digitalisation. For me, it’s about how do you develop those AI capabilities to give you customer insight, tailored products, know your customer better.”
Paul Jamieson
GM Operational Excellence, Bendigo Bank
Supporting employees and leaders
For employees, the change showed up every day. Repetitive tasks fell away, freeing people to concentrate on higher value work. For team leaders, ActiveOps gave a real-time view of workload and capacity. Leaders could see where pressure was building and move people across teams before issues escalated, and use the data to build the case for funding and investment where it was needed.
“For me, it’s about leader capability. What ActiveOps helps me to do is educate and develop leaders, to utilise data to make better decisions, delivering for staff, customers and business.”
Tess Rix
Head of Mortgage Health and Collections, Bendigo Bank
The programme changed the broader leadership culture too: business leaders became change leaders, better able to make the case for investment, resources and new ideas using evidence rather than instinct. For Shraddha Potay, the clearest sign of that shift is that it no longer feels like a programme at all.
“It’s actually become a part of the culture where people use the data and are consistent, and it’s not something new. It is a part of, I call it, the DNA.”
Shraddha Potay
Head of Workforce Management and Performance, Bendigo Bank
The Results
The results showed up in productivity, capability and how leaders led.
- One consistent source of operational data replaced fragmented spreadsheet-based reporting, letting leaders and teams plan ahead and make evidence-based decisions.
- Productivity increased by 35% through the programme and held at a further 10% year on year, moving Bendigo Bank’s into the upper quartile against its peers, and creating room to grow without growing costs at the same rate.
- Decision-making time improved by nearly 50%, giving leaders a stronger footing for planning and letting teams respond earlier to pressure.
- Document turnaround time reduced from 40 days to within one day in one part of the business.
- Manual processes are steadily giving way to automation, as operational data showed where it would make the most difference.
- Business leaders learned to lead with evidence and make the case for investment using data.
“I’m proud of the team and the capability that we’ve built. I’m proud to see where the bank has come in the last three years, particularly in the operational excellence space.”
Paul Jamieson
GM Operational Excellence, Bendigo Bank
The Future
Bendigo Bank isn’t approaching its next phase from a standing start. It has a single platform, a shared language for performance, and several years of demonstrable progress embedding ActiveOps across the business.
The immediate ambition is to widen the footprint. Having proven the approach inside operations, the bank is preparing to extend it to front end bankers, so every part of the bank is working from the same view of demand, capacity and performance. AI and automation will continue to be part of that journey, building on the foundation already in place.
“What really excites me, if I look forward three years from now, is building the muscles around digital transformation and transformation more broadly. It’s about embedding the disciplines in the organisation from operational excellence through change, through execution muscles, so that our teams can deliver faster, they can innovate faster. They can take input from customers and turn that into deliverables within weeks rather than months.”
Gustav Lindstrom
Group Transformation Officer, Bendigo Bank
About Bendigo Bank
Bendigo Bank is Australia’s better big bank, helping our 2.9 million customers to achieve their financial goals. Bendigo Bank’s purpose is to feed into the prosperity of its customers and communities.
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