Why Commercial Ops Leaders Can’t Agree on KPIs

Across the industry, commercial ops leaders are accountable for growth, service, speed, controls, cost, and capacity. Is it any wonder there is little consensus on which metrics matter most?

In a recent Auriemma Roundtables survey, when asked to identify their leading KPI, every commercial banking operations leader gave a different answer, even as they faced the same underlying challenge.

Auriemma Roundtables’ Commercial Operations Roundtable members’ top KPIs ranged from client/employee experience, cost to service, and servicing productivity to funding timing, control effectiveness, and loan origination cycle time. There was no single area that reigned as the most critical across the industry. The wide remit says a lot about the function itself: operations touches nearly every aspect of the commercial banking line of business.

Despite scoring outcomes by different metrics, however, more than 80% of respondents cited the same underlying issue – antiquated systems and legacy processes – as the most major roadblock to meeting their KPIs.

So how do teams move forward when the growth mandate is clear, but the operating environment is already under strain?

Below, Auriemma Roundtables outlines the operational obstacles to overcome as commercial banks modernize processes, support growth, and improve client experience.

Document-heavy work creates review burden

Commercial banking documentation is still frustratingly manual. Loan agreements, amendments, collateral files, treasury records, servicing instructions, trade finance materials, procedures, and client correspondence all require review, interpretation, and follow-through.

• Capacity is a real constraint: As volume grows, manual document review and validation slow funding and servicing, create rework, and increase reliance on institutional knowledge.
• Improvement opportunities include clearer document ownership, better exception tracking, stronger escalation paths, and more consistent visibility into what gets reviewed and why.

Workflow Friction Slows Down Execution

Commercial operations teams often have digital tools in place, but the user experience still creates friction.

• Funding, feature adoption, data reliability, and application usage remain common pain points. In one example, self-service in a client-facing treasury management system had stagnated until guided workflows helped increase self-service by 300% to 400%.
• Improvement opportunities include simpler process design, clearer in-flow guidance, better data capture, fewer support calls, faster completion, and less rework.

Scale is Difficult in a Relationship-Driven Business

Commercial banking does not scale as cleanly as many consumer banking functions because the work is more exception-driven, relationship-based, and client-specific.

• Teams are trying to improve staffing capacity, servicing productivity, service levels, cost to service, and differentiated servicing models.
• The core challenge is balancing efficiency with the judgment, responsiveness, and context commercial clients expect.
• Improvement opportunities include better intake, cleaner routing, clearer handoffs, stronger exception handling, and servicing models that reduce drag without weakening the client relationship.

Employee Enablement is Crucial

Commercial operations depends heavily on experienced employees who understand products, systems, clients, controls, and exceptions.

• Training, onboarding, engagement, procedure updates, and development all become harder when knowledge lives in workarounds or with a small group of tenured employees.
• Improvement opportunities include better knowledge capture, more consistent onboarding, easier access to procedures, stronger peer learning, and clearer development pathways.

Building Out the Right Metrics

Commercial operations leaders need clear KPIs before they can know which improvements are working. But fragmented processes can make it difficult to establish baselines, assign ownership, and connect operational changes to business outcomes.

Improvement opportunities include clearer process metrics, stronger ownership, better visibility into handoffs, and measures that show whether modernization is reducing complexity or adding to it.

That’s why Auriemma Roundtables is debuting a new Commercial Bank Operations benchmark to help leaders answer critical questions such as:

• How quickly are peers opening commercial and small-business deposit accounts?
• How long does it take to move commercial, small-business, and CRE loans from credit approval to booking?
• Where are deposit and loan servicing requests slowing down?
• How much work flows straight through, and how often do digital transactions require employee intervention?
• How do payment volumes, onboarding activity, service requests, and contact volumes compare across institutions?
• Are employee attrition, internal turnover, or staffing structures contributing to operational strain?
• How are peers measuring quality, funding speed, document preparation, and other critical execution points?

Together, these metrics will give commercial operations leaders a clearer view of performance across treasury management, lending, servicing, onboarding, and talent. Instead of relying on isolated internal measures, teams will be able to identify performance gaps, validate priorities, and focus improvement efforts where they can make the greatest difference.

About the Commercial Operations Roundtable

Commercial operations leaders are under pressure to modernize workflows, improve scale, strengthen controls, and deliver better client experiences, all while managing complex, often manual processes.

The Commercial Operations Roundtable gives leaders a confidential forum to compare how peer institutions are approaching those challenges, including where AI is creating practical value, where teams are still cautious, and how operations leaders are prioritizing the problems worth solving first.

To learn how Auriemma Roundtables can help your team benchmark performance, exchange ideas with peers, and bring more clarity to the next phase of commercial operations transformation, contact Barry Lynch.