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Business Intelligence Enriches North
Country Savings Bank
By: Brian Coakley, Chief Information
Officer
North Country Savings Bank, Canton, NY
For North Country Savings Bank, business
intelligence represents a different
focus on information. Instead of asking
how we can deliver information to the
people who need it, we ask what
information they need, because we can
deliver information any time in any
format they want. This has dramatically
improved every aspect of our bank.
Business Intelligence literally drives
our operation, shows us how well we’re
doing, how much our products cost, and
enabling us to answer complex questions
such as the effectiveness of electronic
banking channels in displacing manual
transactions.
Using TotalVision from our core
technology partner, COCC, we do
everything from displaying data in
electronic ‘dashboards’ to producing
complex financial reports for senior
management. We can view branch
performance in terms of new money, paid
off loans, deposits, originations, and
more. We can also display any account
that has gone from a dormant status to
active, any loan customer that our
collectors need to contact, and more.
We feel that information must be
reported at the rate it is created. The
vast payment and banking channels
available to consumers have driven an
exponential increase in the breadth of
financial information. The “reporting’
bar has been elevated and for our staff
traditional stock reporting is no longer
acceptable. Intelligent, targeted, and
automated reporting is no longer cool,
it's critical.
This critical information is produced
automatically and delivered via email on
schedules that we determine. That way,
our staff can receive information
securely on their smart phones wherever
they are.
This level of automation not only saves
time, it also helps us comply with
financial reporting regulations and best
practices. Our specs are fully
documented with a complete audit trail
of changes. Because the information is
fully formatted, employees can use what
they receive rather than introduce
additional formatting and changes. Also,
by giving employees only the information
they need, we have reduced distractions
and limited our customers exposure and
the banks overall risk.
Beyond the time savings and audit
benefits, we are applying business
intelligence to our purchase decisions.
This is important because most vendors
pitch their solutions based on
generalized information; rarely do they
present a cost/benefit analysis based on
the bank’s actual figures. We use
business intelligence to determine when
our bank can reasonably expect a system
to pay for itself.
In some cases we have used business
intelligence to embark on ATM profit
sharing ventures with local businesses.
Traditionally these relationships were
not possible due to tight margins and
the manual steps involved in reporting
and managing the monthly statistics.
Business intelligence enables us to
automate reports that detail the
venture’s associated income and expenses
for the select period of time complete
with the calculated amount that will be
deposited in their account. This is
trusted information delivered directly
from the source with very little
operational overhead.
We use the same approach with bank-wide
strategies, such as shifting customers
away from live teller transactions
toward electronic channels when
appropriate. Bankers readily assume that
e-Statements, direct deposits, overdraft
protection, online bill pay, and debit
cards will reduce cost while increasing
the customer’s value to the bank.
The challenge is to see if experience
matches expectation. We are using our
business intelligence system to weigh
the cost of online bill payment, the
rate of account cannibalization, balance
changes, fees collected, and teller
traffic curtailed. In the end, we
developed an independent view of teller
performance plus a standard against
which the bank can determine if it has
truly displaced costs by encouraging the
electronic channels.
As banking continues to grow in
complexity, we have no choice but to use
business intelligence to test our
assumptions. Our president and CEO,
David Swanson, insists that “instinct be
backed up by facts.” In our experience,
history offers the best chance of
predicting the future. |
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