TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-Envision Credit Union here is making something of a Best Practice out of Best Practices.
The $212-million credit union is being recognized with Credit Union Journal's Best Practices awards in three categories this year: Consolidated Financial Statement Preparation, Process Automation and Improvement, and Allowance for Loan Loss Analysis. All of the new solutions being utilized were produced by the credit union's accounting department. Below is a look at each.
Process Automation & Improvement
In Process Automation and Improvement, Envision Credit Union reports it is now better utilizing computer and software technologies resulting in increased efficiencies, more timely work output, enhanced presentation quality, and considerably improved analysis and general business intelligence capabilities.
"In the old method, a lot of e-mails were being sent around from the branches, and a lot of people were copied on it," explained Dan McGowan, senior vice president and CFO for Envision CU. "It was a long process and it really took time away from what was really important-member service."
Under its former process, branch and main office staff members prepared e-mails, which even non-affected employees were copied on. The coordinating teller supervisor would then transcribe the data into a spreadsheet to compile the orders, print the order sheet, transcribe the data again to the Southeast Corporate order form, leave his or her work station to scan the order form into an image format, and prepare an e-mail to Southeast Corporate by retrieving the image from the scanner memory and attaching it to the e-mail.
"I thought there had to be a better way to do this," McGowan said.
The new method is completely automated, and uses the power of the credit union's already-in-place TM1 OLAP database on its local Intranet. The branches now simply enter the number of units on each coin and currency type they require into a web-enabled order form where all the orders are automatically compiled.
The coordinating teller supervisor then e-mails the order to Southeast Corporate directly from the application.
"This completely eliminated the need for any e-mails whatsoever," McGowan said. "It saves a lot of manual steps. The manager has more time to spend in member service."
The other benefit of the new method is that it provides an easily assessible audit trail or cumulative history, which can be helpful in studying branch cash utilization trends, McGowan noted. All of that was missing under its prior method.
Because the software was already being used by Envision CU, there was no cost involved. "That's the good thing," McGowan said.
McGowan said there were no cons in changing methods, and advised other credit unions to consider similar methods.
"If you can do something in 20 seconds that usually takes 20 minutes or two hours, why not do it in 20 seconds?" he asked.
In creating a Best Practice in Consolidated Financial Statement Preparation, a similarly simple but effective change was implemented by ECU. Envision CU's old method depended on manual research and input into multiple spreadsheets tabs of an Excel workbook, McGowan said. The new method, which is automated, again uses the power of the credit union's already-in-place TM1 OLAP database.
"It's now consistent, and provides a good audit trail," McGowan said. "And it utilizes tools we already had, so there was no cost."
Under the old method, in order to capture all of the activity for eliminations in the production of consolidated financial statements, great pains were taken to assemble the information manually from a number of sources, which took several hours, McGowan said. The new method assembles the data under one common umbrella storage and retrieval environment and immediately produces consolidated financial statements.
The result? The new method allows the credit union to accomplish more work with less employees than before. Two of the CU's CUSOs-United Member Business Services and United HR Solutions-are new to Envision CU this year. But still, the credit union has been able to keep pace even with fewer accounting staff employees than last year.
Allowance For Loan Loss
In creating a Best Practice in Allowance for Loan Loss Analysis, Envision Credit Union knew it had to improve on an internal process that consisted of the credit union's CEO, Ray Cromer, maintaining numerous linked spreadsheets containing historical data affecting the assessment of the allowance for loan loss prevention. After updating the data and performing his analysis each month, the allowance was adjusted based on results of the objectively calculated data and the assessment made by Cromer.
"We felt this needed to be moved to the CFO," McGowan said.
Step one was making that transfer. The accounting department then developed an algorithm that quantifies and documents the logic easier.
The benefits, McGowan said, are low maintenance with very little manual labor, and provision of early warnings and recognition of dollars at risk attributable to the velocity of delinquency changes.
"We took a lot of what he did and put it into the TM1 system," McGowan said. "We added another component into this. We take a look at the total loan portfolio." The new method saves a lot of time, McGowan added. "The bottom line is you need something reasonable that will pass the test of auditors," he noted.
McGowan said the success on all of three of these categories is utilizing the applications the CU already had in place-OLAP and TM1, which have the capabilities of storing data from multiple sources under one common umbrella storage environment.
"If not for such a system, the depth and breadth of analysis we've achieved would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to conduct, using spreadsheets alone," he said.
For info: www.envisioncu.com
BEST PRACTICES
Envision CU, Tallahassee, Fla.
Category: Internal Processes
Provider: Developed Internally
