"Everybody says branches should go away, but they haven't," Kerr said. "The Internet is incredibly useful, but at the end of the day, people still go to ATMs to get cash or to branches to deposit checks."

Commerce Bank chose Getronics to upgrade its branch technology. It finished rolling out the technology just a month ago.

"It was a big leap forward," Kim said. Now Commerce tellers are armed with Dell PCs running Getronics' Globalfs software, an application built on Microsoft .Net that gives the computers capabilities somewhere between thin clients and full-fledged PCs.

Connected to a server in each branch, the system gives tellers quick access to relevant information about the customer in front of them.

"There's only so much real estate on the first screen," Kim said. "So do we give tellers the full details about a customer's trust account? No, but we put up a flag indicating that the customer has one."