PSECU Refines Digital Skills

Harnessing big data through a central conduit can help credit unions produce dynamic portals and dashboards, detailed visualizations, predictive models, automatic alerts and analytics that can be disbursed to personnel through multiple devices.

The New York City-based Information Builders, which provides business intelligence services, announced that the $6.3 billion, Harrisburg, Penn.-based PSECU chose its data and analytics platform to extend self-service decision-making capabilities to employees. PSECU is Pennsylvania’s largest credit union with more than 470,000 members.

According to Robert Burger, PSECU’s chief data officer, the organization selected Information Builders due to its capabilities relating to data visualization, strong data access, governance and mobile deployment – all of which permit personnel to support members with their data requests. PSECU previously used a data warehouse, as well as corporate reporting tools, but executives wanted to get to the next level of maturity with enterprise analytics as part of their overall digital initiatives, which focuses on member experience and performance improvements.

In addition to its conceptual proficiencies, Information Builders’ platform can also support digital gateways, consoles, analytical models and automatic notifications. A responsive design provides consumable analytics through computers, tablets and mobile devices, which employees select for their optimal user experience.

Jon M. Deutsch, vice president and global head of financial services for Information Builders, described his organization as a software company focused on two key products − one for data management and the other for analytics. They work together or independently depending upon customers’ needs.

Deutsch said the data management platform provides access to any database, no matter where it is. Information Builders also provides profiling and data-cleansing services. “We look for errors, omissions and inconsistencies in the data. And then my business rules or technology can rectify those errors. We provide the ability to move and transform data, but do it in some pretty clever ways that reduce the amount of a database administration required,” he said. Information Builders integrates different databases and systems to ensure optimum data mastering and representation in one place for maximum clarity and quality.

“Information Builders not only has superior technology for data intelligence, but also a strong emphasis on data modeling, metadata and data governance,” Burger said. “We were looking for a complete analytics system, not just a tool, and Information Builders offered the most comprehensive platform. Their technology will help us achieve the analytics maturity we need and to use past data to predict future outcomes.”

In the first phase of the project, PSECU used Information Builders’ Credit Union Accelerator, which provides visualization and analysis for operations executives to measure credit union assets, balances, distribution and loan-to-share ratios, as well as members, lending performance and growth. Its pre-built content included an executive dashboard, data descriptions and sample data. It also features a report generator for non-technical users to create their own dashboards and reports.

In phase two, PSECU is expected to develop executive portals that present relevant key performance indicators and business measures. The credit union said it believes this dynamic environment will reveal banking metrics, liquidity positions and profitability trends, which will allow executives to monitor daily changes in cash, loans, balances, margins, ratios and many other important measures of financial health and member stability.

Burger said PSECU implemented the Information Builders platform last June. “Right now, we’re actually using it to build executive dashboards,” said Burger, who emphasized the importance of delivering regular reports to organization leaders regarding the business’ fiscal fitness. “Every company, not just credit unions, wants to see the health of their company and how they’re doing.” Certain key performance indicators built into the portal provide those insights on a monthly basis by delivering data evidence concerning the credit union’s overall financial health.

Burger noted, “It used to be a spreadsheet before and now it’s an actual website they can come and pull up anytime they want.” Eventually, mobile access will come as well. The Information Builders platform reduced what was a week-long process to about 15 minutes without any human intervention.

Burger revealed the credit union has also just started to experiment with predictive modeling. “Trending is one thing, where you’re using the past data to see how you’re doing. But we want to use the past data to predict the future.”

For now, the credit union not only uses the platform within the IT business intelligence group, but in five smaller department BI teams as well. PSECU is training more than a dozen employees to use Information Builders’ platform, and these “power users” can help their respective business units create analytics apps without assistance from the IT department.

In the long run, PSECU would like to migrate the 200 people or so producing operational reports over to the Information Builders system. Burger explained, “They’re not going to get into the dashboards and the charting and the KPIs. They’re going to get into their operational reports so that they can pull them every day and look at them and be able to do what they need to do with it.”

Burger said, “Ultimately what we’re trying to do from a credit union standpoint is put data at people’s fingertips at all times, all places and all times of the day, so they can help understand our business as well as their own department.”

PSECU’s technology roadmap includes using Information Builders’ predictive analytics technology to help members maintain their accounts. For example, it could create a predictive model that monitors loan repayment patterns to help the credit union identify potential delinquencies and prevent charge-offs.

“Increasingly, credit unions compete against large, well-funded banks through streamlined, high-touch member services delivered digitally, efficiently and profitably,” Deutsch said. “As an industry leader in that transformation, PSECU is using analytics to create a superior digital experience for its members.”

Deutsch noted he established the credit union practice at Information Builders about two and a half years ago.

The Information Builders system works with major core platforms including Corelation’s KeyStone, Fiserv DNA and Symitar’s Episys with very specific interfaces and extensible user experience frameworks.

For large organizations, like PSECU, Credit Union Accelerator can help kick off their programs, Deutsch noted.

However, for smaller organizations looking to obtain the full analytics value or without the skill sets to build or design their own system, Information Builders has a prebuilt enterprise application. “It’s designed to provide everybody in the organization access to a single version of truth,” Deutsch said. The out-of-the-box solution includes a data warehouse and data models with more than 1,000 fields, 150 tables and a data dictionary. “Within two weeks we can stand up that environment in the cloud or on premise. And you have a fully functional analytics environment.”