Performance-Net: A Decision Support System for Reconfiguring a Bank's Branch Network

This paper presents a Decision Support System (DSS) that enables the management of a retail bank to evaluate and reconfigure its branch network. The DSS uses computational methods and knowledge that arises from information about the bank's operational and fixed costs, as well as demographic characteristics from the geographical area where branches are located. The DSS that we call Performance-Net estimates the performance of a branch network and determines the optimum number of branches and the optimum mix of services that each one should provide in order to maximize the bank's revenue- generating measures. Its computational engine is based on a linear programming optimization model and its implementation is developed using the standard MS Excel program. Performance-Net provides efficient solutions, is particularly user-friendly and can reach excellent answers for a wide variety of “what if” parametric scenarios.