Most documents travel between Bank of Queensland offices by fax, courier and mail, the bank's chief executive, Stewart Grimshaw, told an investor briefing yesterday by way of illustrating the investment spend facing the group.One challenge for Grimshaw's team in allocating the required spending is that his management team has set itself some stretch targets on profitability that will make long term investment in business needs harder to fund.These targets are:-- lifting the return on tangible equity to around 10 per cent in 2013, rising to 13 per cent by 2015.-- achieving growth of 1.2 x system in retail asset growth by 2015, and growth of 1.5 x system in business assets.-- keeping expense growth below inflation.-- achieving a cost-to-income ratio in the low 40 per cent range by 2015.Apart from investing in a system that will cater to electronic collaboration on files, BOQ needs to speed up key processes such as loan assessments.Grimshaw said it took BOQ three-and-a-half days to reach a decision on a home loan compared with less than one day for a couple of other banks in Australia.He said BOQ took 13 days to reach decisions on business loans and he wanted to reduce this time to closer to five days.The bank is trialling some new sales and service practices in Western Australia that it hopes will lift rates of cross sell - of only two products per customer, at the moment - and improve customer retention.The bank will also try harder at selling basic consumer products such as credit cards. And branches will be able sell insurance product.Another theme highlighted by Grimshaw was the need to reform distribution channels.BOQ scaled back its use of third-party brokers for home loans five years ago, a decision that will be progressively reversed.The bank also needs to invest more in its web-based application processes.These approaches will reduce the bank's reliance on its (largely franchised) branch network.On the other hand, the owners of these branches are already feeling the pinch, with commissions paid last year down 16 per cent.