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Op-Ed Corner

Helping Community Banks Succeed

We partner with our clients to help them reach their business objectives—by leveraging our industry expertise, fostering creative thinking, and bringing new objective perspectives to business challenges.

What We Do

Donner & Associates, LLC provides planning, process improvement and project management services that drive measurable improvement results for community financial institutions.

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Strategic Planning

Assisting your leadership team in evaluating strategic options and integrating those options into agreed-upon long-term objectives and road map.

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Process Improvement

Working with clients in evaluating, re-designing and implementing business process improvements.

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Project Management

Providing experienced leadership or functional expertise to lead, advise regarding, or execute strategic initiatives.

Our services are backed by experienced managers with operational expertise across the key support functions and business processes that comprise the community bank operating model.

How We Engage

More important than what we do is how we do it.

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Partner

We partner with you in developing pragmatic solutions tailored to your markets, operational capabilities and culture.

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Communicate

We believe clearly-defined objectives and proactive communication on our progress provide the foundation for a superior result and relationship.

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Advise

Providing experienced leadership or functional expertise to lead, advise regarding, or execute strategic initiatives

Leadership

Donner & Associates, LLC is led by Suzanne Donner, an experienced consulting leader with a successful track record of advising companies on a broad range of business issues.

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Suzanne consistently demonstrates the ability to effectively partner with client company leaders, managers, and frontline staff to accomplish business objectives.

Acting as a business partner to her clients, Suzanne facilitates the execution of business initiatives and provides intellectual capital with expertise in strategy development and execution, business process improvement and organizational governance, and risk management.

Suzanne’s services are informed by her wealth of consulting and financial services industry experience as a Director in the Financial Risk Management Advisory Services Practice of KPMG, Director in the Financial Services Practice of Dixon Hughes Goodman and Managing Consultant in the Financial Services Consulting Practice at Towers Watson. That experience includes leading executive management and board teams in developing strategic plans; directing operations and process improvement projects that delivered tangible results and savings; leading the development of consulting methodologies and delivery of associated professional training programs; and directing several financial services related research projects including those exploring the characteristics of top performing community banks.

Suzanne holds a Master of Business Administration in Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management from Georgia State University.

Case Studies

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Strategy Development

Using a facilitative approach, assisted various community bank leadership teams develop agreed-upon strategic objectives and plans that reflected their marketplace opportunities and internal capabilities and had the commitment of key stakeholders.

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Process Improvement

Identified end-to-end commercial loan process efficiency improvements increasing straight-through processing, enhancing customer service and effectively utilizing the functionality of a new digital workflow application.

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Research Project Management

In partnership with subject matter experts, led research efforts on environmental trends and external and internal challenges impacting the performance of middle market companies, as well as community banks.

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Finance Project Management

Provided management leadership to a FinTech company in an interim executive role during a carveout. Specifically, was responsible for executing multiple work streams to create free-standing finance, accounting and administrative functions for the newly-formed entity.

Suzanne's Op-Ed Corner

A collection of insights and research about an evolving industry and management responses to take advantage of tailwinds.

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Community Banking

Responding to Uncertainty by Focusing on Bank Fundamentals

The message from speakers on day one of Bank Director’s 2023 Acquire or Be Acquired conference was that community banks should focus on their fundamentals – and their customers in the face of today’s novel environment and uncertainty.

Good advice I’m sure – as an old-school NFL fan, I’m really big on basic blocking and tackling as essential to success.

One speaker Mac Thompson pointed out that community bankers struggle to quantify the depth of their customer relationships; the need to quantify and analyze customers loans and deposits, focus on bringing customers operational accounts to the bank. I like this advice too.

But, somewhere in the summary of key takeaways from day 1, I’d like to have seen messaging on the importance of customer centricity ─ figuring out what customers really want and delivering it.

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Technology/Digital Banking

KPMG Insights: Future of commercial banking

Across the globe, banks serving small and medium sized businesses are transforming to compete, per KPMG’s research; moving to a fully digitally connected bank. Two core messages for community banks embarking on a journey to blend the human touch with seamless digital banking. Efficiency ratio pressures are not going away; you need to focus on products and services that are really needed by the customer and maximize where you place your capital.

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Strategy

Why Good Strategy Arguments Make Better Strategy (MIT Sloan Management Review)

Strategy selection at top performing community banks is about making well-informed choices. These choices often result from honest discussions about unique capabilities and inherent risks between decision-makers and those responsible for executing the decisions.

Per Sorensen and Carroll’s article, arguing is the best way to do strategy, provided the arguments follow established rules and are rooted in principles of logic. Reasoned debate and strategy mapping helps stakeholders understand how others see the situation and arrive at a shared way of thinking. The result: superior strategic execution and learning.

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Business Process

Get Future Ready without Breaking the Bank

Despite major technology investments in operations, bank efficiency ratios remain stubbornly high.

In this podcast Michael Abbott of Accenture clearly explains how evolving AI cognitive tools offered by cloud-based companies can help banks make real advances – in lowering costs and delivering a better customer experience.

The premise – anticipate the customer’s intent, solve the problem before the customer shows up (at branch, on phone, etc.), cut significant wasteful expenses. The benefits – more time for customer-facing employees to have real conversations with customers, expanding relationships, and driving revenue.

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Donner & Associates, LLC

Suzanne Donner, Principal

S.Donner@donner-and-associates.com

404-312-8560

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