Bringing It All Together: Consolidating Disparate Systems to Drive Efficiency

For credit unions, it is common to acquire disparate systems as growth occurs, allowing them to offer more services to their members. Oftentimes these systems are not integrated and cause problems for internal operations and can be confusing to members.

At Chartway Federal Credit Union, consolidation was key to becoming more efficient and productive. The disconnect between systems caused challenges for internal operations, timely processing of member statements and notices, and difficulty with reporting. Chartway finally decided to consolidate its disparate systems, leading to more consistent reporting while enhancing the member experience.

Before You Begin

Before jumping into any major organizational change, it is important to carefully analyze your current systems. Use this exercise to find each pain point to ensure that your new system can resolve as many issues as possible. Make sure you involve the greatest number of staff members as is appropriate. Each person can add different insights based on their internal use cases for the system.

For example, Chartway’s challenge was that the institution previously utilized a variety of outsourced systems to accomplish the delivery and digital presentment of member statements, notices and credit card statements. These disparate systems did not easily synchronize with the core system, leading to challenges with reporting and additional internal coordination.

The need for their systems to work in a cohesive manner became of growing importance. The isolated systems made it easier for data errors and inconsistencies across the different platforms. It was important for Chartway to not only practice the highest level of security for its members, but to always have the necessary information available.

Consolidate Your Systems

After you have analyzed your current systems and have found all the pain points and desired improvements, start researching possible partners. It is important to work with someone whose values and goals align with yours. Chartway searched for a business partner that would assist in solving the issues while also prioritizing the experience and safety of Chartway’s members’ information. Chartway partnered with HC3, a data-driven tech company, to make its complex financial data practical, meaningful and attractive to its members.

The new member statements consist of a full color front page with managed white space to place targeted messaging and charts to visually display the member’s financial well-being. HELOC and LOC notices were also redesigned for an improved member experience, while NSF notices were completely overhauled and changed to a double postcard format.

Internal and Member Benefits

As a result of consolidating disparate systems, Chartway noticed a more efficient and dynamic statement and notice display as well as disbursement timeline. Internally all the updated documents are now housed in one complete document repository. This led to more consistent and thorough reporting.

Chartway cut costs by reducing the material and postage of the NSF notices as well as the natural costs of eliminating systems.

Even though a lot of the work to consolidate was to improve its internal system, Chartway found that this process has a lot of benefits for its members. Through the redesigned member statement and notices, members received a cohesively branded document regardless of the channel. This optimized experience reinforces the detailed service Chartway members experience in person and online. Members have also gained a new and easy way to comprehend documents to make identifying key data as simple as possible.

By utilizing the secure postcard NSF notices, Chartway was able to adjust the current delivery method that now allows members to experience compact and personalized notices, while also benefiting from an eco-friendly, physical mail type of communication.

Just Because It’s Not Technically Broken Doesn’t Mean You Shouldn’t Fix It

Remember, it is always important to make your operations more efficient not only for your staff, but for your members. It is easy to make temporary fixes, but those are never as effective and will not last.

Make sure you do as much research and prep work as you can to identify all the pain points you are hoping to fix. That will pay off in the long run when you have solved as many problems as possible with the smallest number of systems.

Your operations are only as good as your business partner. It is vital to find a true partner for this project. It is often bumpy, but finding a partner that is as invested in your future success as you are makes all the difference.

Regena Pearce-Lowe is the Director of Application Technology for the $2.5 billion, Virginia Beach, Va.-based Chartway Federal Credit Union.