PLEASANTON, Calif. — The ability to quickly retrieve and analyze data is often easier said than done, but one CU has found a way to do just that.
For many credit unions countless work hours are spent extracting data and creating cumbersome reports with a questionable ROI. 1st United Services Credit Union was struggling with related issues until last year.
"We were looking for a single source of truth," said 1st United Services CU's CIO, Joanna Boedecker. "We selected iDashboards to present data in a graphical format initially for our executive leadership."
The decision to use iDashboards came as a result of the credit union's longstanding relationship with Fiserv. In 1989, 1st United Services adopted Fiserv's core system, XP2. However, iDashboards was but one of two critical steps the credit union needed to take in order to streamline its data harvesting and reporting operations.
Back in January 2012, when Boedecker began her post, it was determined that an in-house-built data warehouse solution wasn't performing up to a preferred standard. While there were other vendors considered, the credit union selected and implemented Fiserv's Data Explorer. This solution centralizes data from the XP2 account processing system as well as data from other sources into a single data warehouse, one repository for all data.
Prior to this implementation, several credit union employees spent up to one hour per day pulling data from systems and manually updating spreadsheets to develop reports. And in some cases, report redundancies made it difficult to intelligently compare and analyze data.
"It's not just Fiserv's XP2 database, but also any add-ons the credit unions wants such as home banking, lending, marketing or historical information, among others" said XP2 Product Manager for Fiserv, Bonnie Abbott. "And with Data Explorer and iDashboards, a credit union can determine who has access to the data."
Drilling Down
Abbott explained that iDashboards, a third-party partner vendor, is an on premise or cloud-based dashboard software that displays data in real time from databases, data warehouses, spreadsheets, XML and other determined data sources. The combination of Data Explorer and iDashboards, along with the existing XP2 core system, had made a significant difference in 1st United Services CU's productivity.
In the lending department, for example, 16 scheduled reports are now viewed by a single dashboard allowing all levels of management the ability to quickly "drill down" and study data. "There has been a significant savings on manpower," said Boedecker. "We don't spend as much time on reports; now the focus is using these dashboards."
Boedecker and Abbott noted that the solutions are scaleable. However, the $827.6 million CU had a unique onboarding experience. "We were one of the first adopters, so we had some issues early on," said Boedecker. "We had to do a lot of learning on our own, but iDashboards was also easy to work with and we attended their conferences."
Since partnering with iDashboards, Fiserv has refined the collective offering. Abbot explained that credit unions can now select from various dashboard packages. For instance, an off-the-shelf solution with 75 template dashboards is available. "This is good for smaller credit unions with no dedicated team onsite," said Abbott.
When it comes to training, Boedecker said experienced IT employees can learn the system quickly. She added that the more difficult aspect of the process is having the ability to pull the data, not the implementation of data into the dashboards. For example, the first set of dashboards was created in less than two weeks. Recently, dashboards have been created in as little as two days. "After one day of training at the administrative level, I was up and running," said Abbott. "It was very easy."
And whereas 1st United Services CU initially foresaw the use of dashboards at the executive level, branch managers are now using it on a daily basis to "coach" employees on strategic goals. At one point, more than 600 different reports were being maintained to suit various needs. Today, the credit union is using approximately 15 dashboards, which graphically display the same information and can be viewed across departments, depending on how the access controls are set up.
Aside from a handful of employees now gaining upwards of one hour per day due to the streamlined data gathering and dashboard display approach, one position has been completely repurposed.
"Instead of gathering business development data and creating reports, this employee can focus on growing new business," said Boedecker. "This is driving our productivity and we are starting to see results."
