WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue Employees FCU here can set precise sales goals — and stick to them — in this unpredictable economy, thanks to a sales reporting and forecasting tool it built last year.
Employees are achieving and even surpassing their loan sales goals, for example, since the tool went "live," according to Heather Nally, AVP-sales and service at the $500-million credit union. Last year, employees met nearly 170% of loan goals, and this year looks just as good, said Nally. "I get excited emails from branch managers saying they're at 97%," and that they think they'll be able to meet their goals.
The tool was integrated into the CU's employee portal, provided by Passageways, in January, giving branch managers and frontline staff one-stop access to daily sales reports alongside their other work applications at their portal homepage. The prominent location of the reports "keeps everyone focused on selling products," said Nally. Passageways will soon offer Purdue Employees FCU's reporting and forecasting tool to all its portal clients, Nally said.
Previously, employees relied on weekly sales reports that were two weeks old by the time they could access them. "If you're a sales employee expecting to reach a goal, but you don't know how close you are to your goal until two weeks later, the report doesn't do you any good," she said.
The weekly reports were created through a "tedious" process and were often peppered with errors, added Ryan Erickson, Purdue Employees FCU (PEFCU) database administrator. "The sales employees always had corrections to add. And we spent a lot of time just figuring out which fields to pull into the reports and validating the actual data."
Integrating the tool with the portal also provided Nally with fully automated forecasting for the first time. "Now there's no guesswork in forecasting, so our sales goals are accurate," Nally explained.
The forecasting module feeds data from disparate spreadsheets into one portal interface, which gives Nally the information and automation she needs to complete a forecast in a couple hours. Data feeds include actual sales, sales in the pipeline, historical goals and the current budget.
In the past, the forecasting process was "really ugly," Erickson said. Nally had to access and compare each spreadsheet manually. "I calculate goals as if this year were the same as last year, and then I adjust them to reflect what is going on in the economy," she continued. These days, mortgage refinance loans are "being blown out of the water," so Nally is increasing refi goals. At the same time, there are more loans approved with conditions, which means they sit longer in the pipeline.
Nally then uses the tool to allocate the overall goals to each branch. Branch managers can view the branch goals in the portal, and, in turn, use the tool to allocate branch goals to their employees.
When employees view the sales goals and reports on the portal, they can see that the goals are backed by actual, pipeline and historical sales data. "It's easier to get employee buy-in because they understand where the goals are coming from," Nally said.
The reporting tool, which won a "2008 CUNA Technology Council Best Practices" award, can compare current goals with previous months, actual sales year over year and sort sales by branch or employee, among other functionality.
