The inserter in the mailroom now fits on a tabletop in the corner — as opposed to its predecessor, which filled the room.

When we look at North Shore Bank’s history, we naturally focus on how much banking and banking technology have changed. But our Facilities & Services department has been constantly evolving as well. Even in the last five years, we’ve seen some dramatic shifts in how the team helps us deliver the thoughtful, high-quality service that has made our century of success possible.

Tim and Colleen. Not pictured: Jeff Dolezal and Joe Ebel.

Mail Services supervisor Colleen Moore’s work has changed in huge ways since she started in the mailroom in 2002. Back then, they sent out all of North Shore’s bank statements, using an inserter that took up the entire mailroom. Two employees — a full-timer and a part-timer — were necessary to get everything done.

“The part-time person would pick up the mail at the Brookfield post office. We delivered the mail to each department three times a day,” Colleen says. “We had a courier that delivered interoffice mail to all the branches. We handwrote the UPS/FedEx packages in.”

Around five years ago, Mail Services started doing things differently. An outside contractor mails out statements, and the inserter in the mailroom only takes up one corner. Colleen is the only employee handling the mail now, and departments assign someone to pick up their mail. A courier does the post office pickup, interoffice mail goes through the postal service, and packages are simply scanned in. (The mail does still have to be weighed and distributed to different mail slots each morning, as it was 20 years ago.)

These changes are largely due to technology. “Mail volume has dropped,” Colleen says. “Email is being used more, and our customers use online services for billing.”

For Facilities & Services manager Tim Dotson, who took over the department in 2018, technology has also changed the game.

“The role used to be very purchasing-focused,” he says. But now, much of the purchasing is automated or self-service. That has meant Tim could direct more of his attention toward taking care of people. “I have really tried to transform us into a service-first focus where we concentrate on making sure our built environments at Corporate and our branches are delivering pleasant, enriching experiences for both our customers and our employees.”

Implementing a new work-order system has made a big difference too, reducing the number of open orders at any given time by about 75 percent and ensuring orders don’t get lost. That upgrade was “a huge challenge,” Tim says — “but it was really worth it!”

Change can bring other challenges as well. Colleen notes that she misses delivering mail to all of the departments at Corporate. “I got to know people better than I do know,” she says.

But in many ways, new technology has allowed different parts of the company to coordinate more closely.

“The most interesting component of this job is how far-reaching it is. I get to work with nearly everyone in our organization, and our department can really make a difference,” Tim says. “The best part is, there is never a month that goes by where I don’t learn something new. The facilities realm is awesome for people who have that natural curiosity about how things — processes, equipment, buildings, PEOPLE — work, and that is most definitely me.”