In this world of digital transformation, the role of data analysis in decision-making has significantly increased. And, this gives the importance to adopt the analytical maturity model. Analytical Maturity Model is a sequence of steps that are used to represent the evolution of the company in its ability to manage internal & external data and this data can be used to make informed business decisions. Things that every company would like to accomplish are:

• Growth: In terms of members, loans, shares, etc.
• Health: Not just the financial health of the organization; also the health of people associated with the organization
• Sustainability/Adaptability: As an organization, it is important to sustain all the outcomes that have been faced. And, ability to adapt things for the survival of the organization.
• Service: The quality to serve the best to members. And, service towards the organization to grow exponentially.
  

And, these models help in assessing and describing how companies use their resources to get value out of data. 

At CULytics Annual Summit 2021, Rob Burger, Enterprise Business & Technology Strategist, shared the journey and adventures at PSECU for building a portal for PSECU Insights. 

The journey started with a brave BI expedition team. The focused approach was on finding answers to the followings:

How does PSECU measure its Health?

To ensure the good health of the working system, a keen eye was put on:

• Daily Status Report. It comprises a Daily snapshot of balances (Loan, Share, and Investment), balance fluctuation from day to day, comparisons of current to month-end balances, differences of calculations, and percentages.
• Balance Scorecard (aka PSECU Insights). It comprises of monthly view of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure the performance as an organization, data from the income statement to find out the actual value for the month, plan/Budget values, last year values, thresholds (Exceeds, Meets, Minimum, Warning), and trend KPI’s through the years. This helps in analyzing where the organization was and where it has to go.

Before the beginning of the Journey, the above two measures were put together to measure the growth manually each day/month and a matrix (spreadsheet) looking report (no trend/visualization).

What does PSECU measure?

Tools were there but the question was what to be measure? There was a strategic plan having four pillars - Accelerate Growth, Enhance & Expand Revenue Opportunities, Build Efficiency & Scalability, and Optimize Talent. All items were aligned with these pillars for ease. 

• Daily Status Report. The Daily report consists of Share, Loan, Investment balances, Break out of products for each of these loan & investment balances, previous day and previous end of month $ amounts, Calculation of $ change from the end of the month to the previous day, and % change calculation for each product balance.
• Balance Scorecard (aka PSECU Insights) (KPIs). It is a bunch of KPIs that should be at the core to achieve good. KPIs that are required for growth are: 
• Financial- ROA, Net Worth, and Net Income are the key to survive in the market.
• Growth–Member, Revenue, Loan, and Asset; these are the most important things for an organization.
• Membership–Income Returned, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and PFI (primary financial institution) score should be more for an organization.
• Efficiency–Keep an eye on Operating Expenses to make things better. 
• Employee–Engagement with manpower is important and also giving them opportunities to contribute to the organization’s overall growth.

How did PSECU move forward?

To move forward, it is imperative to work together and in collaboration with all the teams. There were five different departments between marketing, HR, IT, Admin, and finance teams to make sure that the maximum is obtained during the journey. Another key thing is data; it should be all available to analyse things. Consistency is important in work that should be followed all along the way during the journey. Constant check on what is achieved and what is desired is essential, so a vigil note on it will help in ensuring success. As the journey moves ahead, taking feedbacks and working on them will lead the organization towards success. Analytical tools or an analytical team could be a great help for this. If there is tons of manual work that needs to be done with precision, investing in automated manual tasks could be a good decision.

What was accomplished?

When BI work finished, it had become easy to see more visualization pre-pandemic, during the pandemic and after the pandemic with dashboards. As a result, collaboration increased and duration of tasks got reduced and it became easy to:

• Tell the story with visualizations, not just numbers. Eliminate errors from manual calculations
• Reduce the time getting the reports into employee’s hands
• Build trend reports in both the daily and monthly dashboards
• Add Quarterly Peer data from Callahan
• Move analytics to the next level

What lessons did PSECU learn?

• Collaboration: Individuals should be freed to be the owner of what they are doing.
• Work together, no silos: When an organization succeeds, it is the success of every individual. Work silos should not get a chance to spoil it.
• Verify data: Data verification is important before and after it is on the dashboard or reports. 
• Build out a use case to get started and stick to it: Keep it, learn from it, and do better.
• Feedback: It is important to know what end-user need and how they are going to use what is offered.
• Complete analytical tool to assist in your journey: A good system of tools is a must to reduce the task time and increase the success rate.
• Don’t be afraid to fail: Adopt a strategy, if it fails; learn from it. And, if it succeeds, continue it.
• Take the next step to visualization, it will be worth it: Take a step towards digitalization. A picture worth speaks a thousand words.
• Tell the story: Share your story to help to learn others.

So, these were the journey highlights of PSECU. Getting knowledge of the system and making a strategic approach accordingly will definitely drive optimum outcomes.