Introduction
P1FCU is a $2.2B Lewiston, Idaho-based credit union, who has grown tremendously over the past decade and is now a financial leader in the Western Idaho region. Striving to answer the age-old question of “what’s actually happening in branches” has led them to develop an innovative report that reveals branch activities at the teller level. With 26 branches, and another one on the way early next year, understanding what operational needs were required of each branch was critical to the credit union’s success as they continued to expand their footprint.
Understanding What’s Actually Happening at the Branch Level
Mike Vogeler, COO at P1FCU, originally sent in the request, hoping to answer a question that plagues financial institutions: “What’s really happening at our credit union branches?” He asked if the data team could develop a report that was updated daily with branch activities. The data team, including Clint Johnson, VP of Data & Analytics, and Annie Stuart, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, collaborated across departments to gather information and strategize. Their goals were to determine:
• How many people do they need in each branch?
• What types of staff do they need?
• What are they doing with their time?
Using the Gemineye Data Lakehouse, P1FCU created a report that visualized how much time tellers at each branch were spending on operational activities.
“Having a historical record is really helpful for us so that we can run this report at any point in time and know that it’s accurate information, and that we’re not just pulling the most recent or a static date.”
Decisioning with Data Rather than Opinion
So often, financial institutions rely on anecdotal evidence, or a “gut feeling” when determining what’s happening at their branches. COO Vogeler recognized this problem and was determined to use data rather than opinion to manage branches. He said, “The intention was to understand what’s happening on a day-to-day basis in our branches and what kind of support do we need to provide to make sure that we’re keeping our service levels where we want them to be. I wanted a report provided a dynamic way to look at branch activity over time and determine what makes sense and eliminate having to manually entering things on a spreadsheet.”
The project revealed key insights about how personal opinion shapes what it means to be busy at the branch level. “Our longer-term branch managers are at some of our busier branches, so ‘busy’ to them versus ‘busy’ to other managers might be different, “says Vogeler. “We wanted to find out what our branch managers need from us to feel supported and be enabled to run at capacity.”
The Importance of Collaboration to De-Silo Data
A collaborative environment is key to P1FCU’s success in analytics projects. “We all work really well as a data team, but we also work really well with external teams,” explained Analyst Stuart. “When someone from an outside team asks for a report, as was the case with the branch operations report, there’s a lot of back and forth to make sure that we’re providing what they really need – and sometimes not just what they think they need – but what they’re actually asking for.
And when it comes to new branches, Gemineye’s customizable platform proves extra valuable, with minimal effort. “We’ve got a branch that we opened a year and a half ago,” says COO Vogeler. “We could apply what we’re seeing in a newer branch and have a good historical understanding of what the ramp up is going to be for upcoming branches we open.” Gemineye’s innovative integration-focused structure allowed P1FCU to combine:
• Core data
• Loan data
• Teller metric reports
• Miscellaneous vendor data (like notary appointment services)
• Their own in-house data
Below are reporting examples of the Gemineye Data Lakehouse branch functionality for deposit performance
Conclusion
P1FCU was able to leverage the Gemineye Data Lakehouse to support their needs during a critical time of expansion. By creating a flexible report that provided fact-based information rather than opinion on current branch operations, P1FCU has alleviated a nagging pain point. Moving forward, they’ll also be able to apply these insights to new branch decisioning for staffing, lending, and technology. VP of Data Analytics Johnson explained, “Having the right platform that’s flexible and capable of holding and reporting all your data is very convenient. The Gemineye Data Lakehouse is built on Microsoft Azure and Databricks, which allows us customization – We add to it constantly. It’s far faster than having a whole system in house on premise.”
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