Fifth Third Bank’s Investment in Saba Learning Supports Rapid Growth
REDWOOD SHORES, CALIF., Sept. 9, 2002 – Saba (NASDAQ: SABA), the leading provider of Human Capital Development and Management (HCDM) solutions, today announced that Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB), one of the top ten largest bank holding companies based on market capitalization in the United States, has deployed Saba Learning, Enterprise Edition to provide learning to its growing employee population across 15 decentralized affiliates. By using the Saba system to train employees on new products and services, Fifth Third can increase cross-selling opportunities and speed to market, retain employees of newly acquired companies, and increase customer satisfaction.
Fifth Third Executive Vice President of Legal and Human Resource, Paul Reynolds, says the banking business is all about people: “To continue to grow our business and retain our leadership in the industry, we need to invest in technologies that increase employee productivity and performance. Highly-skilled individuals will increase our revenues, make us faster, and ensure our success in the market.”
Fifth Third required a learning management system to respond to its three major business challenges:
Rapid growth and a 400% increase in its employee base over the past three years through acquisitions and internal expansion
Decentralization across 15 affiliates with inefficient and manual training administration processes
Speed to market and cross-selling of new products and services, such as brokerage services
To meet these challenges, Fifth Third deployed the learning management system from Saba to provide consistent, just in time learning to all its employees. It is using Saba Learning to increase efficiencies, centralize learning, and decrease administration time and costs.
According to David Palm, Vice President and Director of Education and Career Development at Fifth Third, “We expect Saba Learning to help decrease administrative time by 50% through the elimination of manual training processes. We also expect the Saba system to help improve our cross-sell ratios. Simply stated, if each employee sells one more credit card due to the skills acquired through training, we can more than pay for our learning technology investments.”
In the future, Palm says the bank plans to use Saba Learning and the Saba certifications functionality to help ensure compliance with federal regulations concerning lending, brokerage services, fraud, and accounting.
Saba President and CEO, Geno Tolari stated, “The banking industry is faced with challenges such as changing regulations and the need to grow the scope of services offered. We are grateful for the opportunity to team with Fifth Third as it grows its organization and develops its people for competitive advantage.”
About Fifth Third
Fifth Third Bancorp is a diversified financial services company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Company has $75 billion in assets, operates 16 affiliates with 921 full-service Banking Centers, including 135 Bank Mart® locations open seven days a week inside select grocery stores and 1,853 Jeanie® ATMs in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Florida and West Virginia. The financial strength of Fifth Third’s affiliate banks continues to be recognized by rating agencies with deposit ratings of AA- and Aa1 from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, respectively. Additionally, Fifth Third Bancorp continues to maintain the highest short-term ratings available at A-1+ and Prime-1, and was recently recognized by Moody’s with one of the highest senior debt ratings for any U.S. bank holding company of Aa2. Fifth Third operates four main businesses: Retail, Commercial, Investment Advisors and Midwest Payment Systems, the Bank’s electronic payment processing subsidiary. Investor information and press releases can be viewed at www.53.com. The company’s common stock is traded through the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol “FITB.”
About Saba
Saba (Nasdaq: SABA) is the leading provider of Human Capital Development and Management (HCDM) solutions. Saba offerings include an integrated Internet-based platform to manage learning, content, performance, talent, and collaboration; and related professional services. Organizations around the world rely on the Saba platform to ensure that their customers, partners, and employees have the knowledge and skills required to successfully execute business initiatives.
Among the Global 2000, Saba customers include Alcatel, Telecom Italia, DaimlerChrysler, EDS, Procter & Gamble, Medtronic, Anheuser-Busch, Ford Motor Company, Continental Airlines, General Electric, Cisco Systems, EMC Corp., and VERITAS Software. The Saba ecosystem of partners includes Allos, Buck Consultants and Mellon HR Solutions, Cisco, Deloitte Consulting, PWC Consulting, a business of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and SchlumbergerSema.
Saba was recently positioned in the leader quadrant in Gartner’s 2002 LMS “Magic Quadrant”. Founded in 1997, Saba is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, with offices worldwide. For more information, please visit www.saba.com or call (877) SABA-101 or (650) 779-2791.
Saba, the Saba logo, and the marks relating to other Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
