CARSON CITY, Nev.-A staff forecasting tool has allowed Greater Nevada CU to reduce staff at the same time member activity levels have increased.
Greater Nevada eliminated five full-time positions after it closed two branches. However, those HR savings didn't result from employees let go at the shuttered locations; instead, they came from the remaining eight branches, which are handling overflow from the closed offices. The five positions were reduced through attrition.
Tom Wambaugh, VP member services at the $500-million GNCU, noted of the software application the CU is using, "Inevitably your tenured employees think they can draw up a better schedule than the machine. But all they are doing is guessing. We have to get down to brass tacks and do the math."
The credit union's branch supervisors can't argue with the results, according to Wambaugh. GNCU uses Verint System's Impact 360 managed service solution. Staff forecasts at the credit union's largest branch last month showed an error ratio of 1.01%, and .35% at its smallest office. "At our main location we actually did 20,493 transactions and we forecasted for 20,700," Wambaugh said.
Verint's tool helped GNCU quickly gain an understanding of how transactions from the closed location were being redistributed. It also opened the CU's eyes to new norms. "Often scheduling is based on old assumptions, and some of those today are just wrong," said Wambaugh. Impact 360 showed the credit union that Saturdays are now much busier, controlling payday spread on Mondays and Fridays is not as great an issue today, and 8am to 9am drive-through hours are much less important than tending to the drive-up lane from 5:30pm to 6pm.
"The program also identified a weird teller event," Wambaugh said. "We did not realize that a new local employer was paying staff every other Wednesday. But transaction counts don't lie, and from 3:30pm to 5pm every other Wednesday we needed two more tellers than we thought we needed."
Each month GNCU e-mails Verint a transaction count number that details transaction type with the time stamp. Before initiating the program, Verint performed time studies on how long it takes the credit union's staff to handle each type of transaction. After Verint receives the monthly data and analyzes it, the company loads the forecast into the forecasting tool the credit union accesses online.
According to the Melville, N.Y.-based Verint, pricing for Impact 360 starts $160 per branch per month, with additional discounts based on the size of the branch network.
