Umpqua Bank Executive Summary

Executive Briefing for Umpqua Bank
To: Re: Ray Davis, President and CEO Strategic Growth Plan From: Date:

Executive Summary
Umpqua Bank’s goal is to differentiate the customer experience with a creatively nontraditional culture and a radically different mindset of branding locations as “stores” and not “branches” supported by highly innovative and environmentally friendly design. The issue of cost vs. value of design for the Bend Wall Street Project and Humboldt stores is addressed as Umpqua seeks to maintain its culture and values and brand image while undergoing rapid growth through acquisitions and mergers. Two key recommendations are to take steps to create value across their future stores through reconfiguring the stores into two
Prioritizing the construction of stores based upon expected revenue will enable Umpqua to carry out large merger and acquisition process smoothly (in terms of maintaining their cultural bank image) and efficiently (in terms of cost) such as in Humboldt situation. Blending local neighborhood cultural values along with Handshake Marketing into Umpqua’s own cultural value in Bend will create ‘home’ kind of atmosphere and consequently Umpqua’s ‘Brand Experience’ will get embedded into local population. The idea of “Express” stores may face internal opposition. Change is not always readily welcome. In addition, smaller size stores may not reflect the exact cultural feel and effect as compare to regular Full Service stores. Prioritizing the development of Humboldt stores may give advantages to Umpqua’s competitors by entering into the market before them. Creating local cultural values in the store may create overhead in terms of extra money and
Recommendation 1: Spin Off Spin off “Express” size stores into middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods with solid analysis to support the specific location selection. Benefits and Anticipated Results Spinning off the express stores offers a more efficient building process and will be instrumental in minimizing costs. Umpqua will be able to increase the customer experience through this customization based on local preferences and tastes. The outcome will be to attract clients to the branch location. Promotional mediums will be selected based on these local attributes. Recommendation 2: Humboldt Prioritization Prioritize the development of Humboldt stores based on demographics and expected revenues in concert with the implementation of the Express store concept in markets such as Bend. Benefits and Anticipated Results A systematic prioritization of the Humboldt stores will allow faster revenue generation and a more even distribution of the finance load. Performance will be tracked and this will offer more in-depth management information to measure and control performance as the process progresses. This will result minimizing risk involved in estimating revenues and allowing Umpqua to be more flexible and adaptive