We are so excited to announce the winner of our first ever Gemineye Client Developer Award! This award represents the very best in credit union data analytics application and innovative solutions to industry pain points. The award was given to P1FCU, led by Annie Stuart, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at the $2.2B, Lewiston, Idaho-based credit union. P1FCU has grown tremendously over the past decade and is now a financial leader in the Western Idaho region.

The Gemineye Client Developer Award is based on several criteria, including:

• Innovation and Creativity
• Technical Excellence
• Impact on Operations or Member/Customer Services
• Collaboration and Teamwork

Understanding What’s Actually Happening at the Branch Level

P1FCU’s project submission featured a report that visualized how much time tellers at each branch were spending on operational activities. Clint Johnson, VP of Data and Analytics, Stuart, and the rest of the data team collaborated cross-departmentally to answer the age-old question that plagues financial institutions: “What’s actually happening at our credit union branches?” And with 26 branches – 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 grow.

Stuart has been with P1FCU for six and a half years. She didn’t start out wanting to work in data, but like most of the data analysts we talk to, she got interested in data and never looked back. A request from Mike Vogeler, COO at P1FCU, was the catalyst for the award-winning project, hoping that Stuart’s team could develop a report that was updated daily with branch activities. Stuart explained, “We really wanted to answer the question: How many people do we need in each branch? What are they doing with their time? What level of staff do we need?”

So often, financial institutions rely on anecdotal evidence, or a “gut feeling” when determining what’s happening at their branches. 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.”

Collaboration is Critical in a Data-Driven Culture

A collaborative environment is key to P1FCU’s success in analytics projects, like many other data-driven financial institutions. “We all work really well as a data team, but we also work really well with external teams,” explained 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.

Stuart’s team collaborated with colleagues and vendors to gather all the information needed to “de-silo” data sources and create a report that illustrated the real ongoings at the branch level, but it wasn’t easy. “Because we have so many different systems, it can be difficult to join all of those together in a data model, and we have to come up with creative ways to make sure that that happens,” said Stuart.

How the Gemineye Data Lakehouse’s Customization Helped P1FCU

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

“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 some sort of static date,” said Stuart.

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.”

Below are reporting examples of the Gemineye Data Lakehouse functionality for deposit performance as it relates to branches.

P1FCU’s Advice for Credit Unions Getting Started in Data

Stuart’s advice to credit unions wanting to start on their data-driven journey? “Just start. Sometimes just starting is the hardest part. Start down the path and then you can tweak as you go.”

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.”

A big congratulations to P1FCU and the data team for their innovative and collaborative efforts in branch operations. For more information on P1FCU, visit their website or find them on social media.

See Gemineye’s Data Lakehouse in Action

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