Conventional wisdom suggests scheduling ATM maintenance during slow periods to minimize impact to member service, but what if you didn't really know when those slow periods were?
"We typically would schedule system maintenance immediately after business hours to reduce member impact," said Digital CU IS Operations Team Leader Allison Cormier. But after the CU adopted a new predictive data analytic solution, the Marlborough, Mass.-based credit union made some startling discoveries. "It has made us question and potentially rethink our maintenance strategies for certain member services."
Oddly enough, the credit union wasn't even in the market such a tool.
"We were not necessarily looking for an analytics tool at the time, but we are always looking at new technologies to improve credit union operations," said Cormier related. "When we saw the Ascern demo, we were impressed by the capabilities it offered."
Cormier referenced the Kingwood, Texas-based SMA Solutions and its product offering Ascern, a cloud-based business intelligence tool that can monitor virtually any system or process in real time. While DCU was an early adopter of the solution (launching in February 2015), the platform gained industry notice at the CUNA Technology Council Conference, during which SMA Solutions was among a host of vendors that competed in the Speed Round competition. The event gave exhibiting vendors the opportunity to present a seven-minute demonstration of respective products.
"The competition was tough and we were being judged by some of the most progressive technologists in the credit union industry," said SMA Solutions President Kathy Hooker Burress. "We were able to get Ascern's message of greater efficiency through real-time predictive analytics across, and the audience responded favorably."
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Originally, the $6.5 billion DCU intended to use Ascern to replace an existing device monitoring tool for its ATMs and card processing system. Cormier said the solution held more possibilities for the CU that supports 527,446 members and more than 1,000 employees at 22 branch locations.
When it came to ATM tracking, Cormier and her team realized other ancillary benefits. "We are able to track and trend transaction types, counts, cash flow, device status and other processes in almost real time, giving us the ability to find issues sooner rather than later."
SMA's Chief Technology Officer Todd Dauchy said the solution can also be used for debit card monitoring and forecasting, ATM cash forecasting and branch transaction and teller forecasting.
"DCU is a rapidly growing and highly innovative credit union, said Dauchy. "They helped us tremendously to evolve the technology into the robust and flexible tool it is today."
From concept to launch, Cormier said the process took approximately four weeks. The setup, she noted, required hardware and software. Integration on DCU's side was also needed, which required a developer to create secure connections into the database.
For training and education, DCU took a measured approach. Initially, Cormier explained that operations were internal to the IS department. But once the solution was deemed functional and data was verified, the branch and call center management teams were the first departments to "demo" the solution.
"After a few suggested changes to meet their needs, we began branch training with the intention of bringing on additional back office departments in the near future," said Cormier. "One of the biggest benefits we have gained from the partnership is putting data into our end users hands without the need for developer involvement or creating custom reports. As you can imagine, the use cases for this information is endless."
