MARIETTA, Ga.-LGE Community CU is spending less time gathering data and making more informed strategic decisions by using a business intelligence solution.
The solution, from iDashboards, is enabling management at all levels to quickly access the data they need-such as loan activity, memberships, and shares-to make decisions that drive business, according to Brad Hutchinson, supervisor of business systems at LGE. "Being a supervisor in IT, it has given me the ability to focus on other projects, rather than building reports for management. And it gives top-level management more confidence in the numbers they see."
Hutchinson said iDashboards standardizes reports. "Previously management would ask for different types of reports all the time, and we would custom create those. But that meant everyone in the company was asking for and looking at different data."
The $750-million LGE now has a dashboard with more than 50 different metrics that have detailed charts color-coded for scanning. Previously, staff would have to submit a help desk ticket, wait for a report to be created, and then review "volumes of data. Sometimes the information would be hard to evaluate when you were looking at pages and pages of numbers. With iDashboards you go from spending 15 to 20 minutes evaluating a report down to seconds."
iDashboard's solution is designed for Symitar core systems, but can be used with others. It is installed on the server and is browser based. The tool's homepage has high-level charts that can be clicked on to break down information to gain greater detail. Hutchinson said that allows everyone from the CEO on down to tellers to use the system easily and get the information they need.
iDashboards Account Rep Lynwood Taylor said the price for the tool ranges from $40,000 to $80,000, based on the number of people viewing the dashboards. "Some credit unions want everything to start with and some prefer to roll it out slowly-get executive management up and running and go from there." Taylor added the application can be extended to build interactive dashboards displaying live metrics for help desk, phone, and other systems.
"We can see how many help desk tickets are in queue for our techs," noted Hutchinson. "For the phone system we plan to have a large-screen TV in the member service center that refreshes every minute, displaying the phone calls, which tech has taken the most calls, and average call time."
