SALEM, Ore. — Innovations born from an "Idea Lab" here have reduced annual non-statement postage expenses by 17% and saved 240 person-hours per year of manual data entry. These results earned Maps Credit Union a 2015 Celent Model Bank Innovation Award.
"As the winners were mostly large international banks, I was surprised and impressed to be on the same stage as them," said Maps CU Software Development Manager Loren Paulsen. "Not only was Maps CU the only credit union awarded this year, but we were also by far the smallest institution in our category, the next smallest being 16 times our asset size."
Now in its eighth year, the Celent Model Bank Award sets out to research and answer the following questions: What would it look like for a bank to do everything right with today's technology? What are some best practices and measurable business results of IT projects? And, what can other banks learn from these initiatives?
"Although most awards are made to banks and bank holding companies, credit unions have submitted nominations every year," said Bob Meara, a senior analyst with Celent's Banking. "Any mix one way or the other is not intentional. But simply reflects an analysis of nominations we receive."
While nomination is independently judged by a minimum of four Celent analysts, Meara explained that analyst composition is a function of each nomination. "We align analysts and nominations based on analyst coverage areas, so that judging analysts are relatively expert in each area."
This year's categories were: digital banking, omni-channel banking, innovation and emerging technology, legacy and ecosystem transformation and payments innovation.
"Financial institutions can nominate themselves or they can be nominated by vendors on their behalf (assuming full consent)," said Meara. Nominations are made online. Celent will be accepting nominations for Model Bank 2016 until 27 November 2015 (
An Award Worthy CU
Regarding Maps CU Innovation and Emerging Technology Award, Celent released the following statement: "Maps' Idea Lab is noteworthy both for its demonstrable success in engaging broad organizational energy and support for innovation and for its use of open APIs (application programming interface) as a fast and effective way to implement innovative ideas."
In 2012, the $500 million Maps CU, supporting 250 employees, 50,000 members at nine branch locations, launched Idea Lab. Paulsen explained that the initiative occurred after Maps migrated its dated core banking system to DNA from Fiserv. The goal was to leverage employees' unique perspectives and experiences to identify areas for operational improvement.
"Six employees form the committee that performs the initial review of the ideas and presents them to executives and other stakeholders throughout the organization," noted Paulsen. "Employees are recruited from various functional areas as ideas relating to their departments are submitted."
Every month, two of Maps CU's developers work on projects generated through the Idea Lab. By the end of the same month, a new project is rolled out. Recently, several projects made use of SendGrid, a powerful email platform.
"Its sophisticated API extends transactional email functionality to any application, including analytics on the number of opens and bounded emails," said Paulsen. "By connecting SendGrid to DNA, Maps CU was able to convert the NSF (insufficient funds) notices generated by DNA into emailed notices."
As a result, notices for members who have no email address on file, or have bounced emails, are automatically printed instead, explained Paulsen. To date, by converting to a single notice, annual non-statement postage expense has been reduced by 17%.
To automate business processes and predictable actions related to member accounts, the DNA API was also employed. For example, Paulsen noted that before the conversion to DNA, Maps CU's Loss Prevention department was issuing "No Transaction" and "No Withdrawals." As a result, employees would receive a report every morning detailing the changes to make, which could number in the hundreds. "Using the API, Maps CU was able to fully automate this process, saving 240 person-hours per year of manual data entry."
Market Awareness
Maps CU has its own CUSO, CU Wireless. Offerings include mobile apps, text banking, mobile deposit, among other services including its Buy Local app, which connects credit union members with local merchants offering members targeted deals.
"Maps CU sells some of its innovations to other credit unions on Fiserv's DNAappstore, a unique marketplace for add-ons to the DNA core system, developed by Fiserv, its clients, as well as independent developers," said Paulsen.
In recent months, Paulsen added that there has been a "surge of interest" in analytics and dashboards. As a result, the CU recently rolled out a dashboard, which allows staff to view member satisfaction scores in real time, powered by the FormStack Webhook API.
"By incorporating APIs from our core system and loan origination platform, we're currently planning to add real time sales information, giving a holistic view of branch performance and member satisfaction in a single view," said Paulsen.
