ATLANTA — The CRM system that Georgia Central CU built is delivering corporate-friendly data that helps it carefully watch members.
MARTIE does what no off-the shelf Contact Relationship Management (CRM) system can do: regional representatives and local staff can access the system via the web in order to consistently and officially log their daily interactions with the corporate's 180 member-CUs, which are spread mainly across Georgia, according to Dawn Sirras, SVP, chief technology officer at the corporate here.
MARTIE (the Marketing, Accounting, Relationship, Technology and Investments Expert) is Georgia Central's February rewrite of the original CRM system it built in 2002.
Hot-button topics for member credit unions include the Corporate Stabilization Program and the related Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), she said. In response, Georgia Central quickly added an "activity" category to the MARTIE database that would help staff capture all member discussions and questions circling the Stabilization Program and ANPR, said Sirras.
Town Hall Meeting & FAQs
That means MARTIE's weekly Stabilization and ANPR report, which shows the status of each member interaction, is particularly relevant, Sirras continued. "We don't want to drop the ball, especially during this economy, because proving our worth is so important. The biggest thing we've learned is where we need to offer guidance to our members about the Corporate Stabilization and ANPR. We've needed to schedule some town-hall meetings and provide some FAQs and due diligence information."
Housed on a web application with an SQL database that now draws from members' core systems and 5300 reports, the new MARTIE can handle the corporate's sophisticated queries and growing volume of data, said Sirras. Previously, staff would browse the network to compile data from a disparate series of automated macros in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
MARTIE reveals the flow of investments through the $2-billion corporate. "We can track our market share to see how much of our members' funds are coming to us," Sirras said. The "fully automated" feature is "fantastic for our liquidity and the retention of our credit unions." Reports show balances, trends and liquidity analysis-today and in comparison to previous years, she said.
Investment tracking demonstrates that Georgia Central has "maintained member confidence," said Sirras. "If anything, we're growing." MARTIE can compare current deposits to years past, or pinpoint CUs that are pulling back on deposits, for example. Then, management can contact the CU with suggestions, such as to move money from a settlement account into a higher-investment account, she said. "Credit unions need every penny they can get these days and some are not watching their money in the settlement account."
MARTIE's new "buying profile" alerts representatives as to the investment habits of each member - CU, Sirras said. "That information helps us solidify the relationship with the credit union and gives them peace of mind that we're keeping track of their investment profile."
The new "billing" tab completes the entire picture of the member relationship, she said. The Georgia Central accounting unit can now track member product usage and profitability, and the billing cycle is more straightforward.
MARTIE also watches interactions with third parties, such as peer corporates. "We can see how Georgia Central is doing in comparison," Sirras said.
Off-the-shelf CRM software would have fallen short, she said. "We didn't find anything that met our needs. We would have had to sacrifice getting the information we needed to support our member credit unions, or we would have had to customize the software" - which would have doubled the project budget.
Packaged products offered "no easy way to capture the concept of a regional meeting and the participants' interactions," Sirras explained.
