No credit union leader likes to generate reports, and that includes the IT staff who have to provide all the data needed to populate those reports.
Cenla FCU has found a way to make life easier for everyone when it comes to reports needed by the board, the CEO and department heads.
Cenla FCU's Information Systems Specialist Chris Chelette said he'd been using an Excel-based application that required him to sift through five data fields for each field of information. The amount and tedium of the work cut Chelette off from the rest of the credit union for the first three days of every month. Board members needed copies of their reports by the 10th of the month in preparation for the regular meeting the 15th.
"I was the only one in the credit union who could create a report. You had to have a degree just to log in," Chelette said of the Alexandria, Va.-based credit unions previous reporting system.
With a goal of creating a report-generating solution that had a turnaround time of no longer than four hours, was a web-based tool so that it was easy to use, and which could create graphics relatively easy and be distributed automatically, Chelette found his answer in the Integrasys ReportIT application. Using ReportIT software, Chelette told The Credit Union Journal's Best Practices Conference that he reduced his time spent creating reports from three days to 45 minutes. The reports are run from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., well before he or CEO William Thomas arrive for work. "When I come in at 7 a.m., they're done," he said.
Responding to an audience question regarding member data storage, Chelette said historical data does stay within the ReportIT system. Personal employee data is also blocked. While not real-time data, the reports are based on data that is about one day old. Chelette told the conference that Cenla does restrict access and usually runs reports for separate branch managers. Chelette also said that any credit union CEO can set parameters for reports, which ones to run and when they'll be e-mailed each day.
