Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions
Why Banks and Credit Unions are Turning to Performance Management s Enterprise Performance Management...Corporate Performance Management...Business Performance Management. Regardless of what you call it, the terms describe the processes, methodologies, metrics and solutions used to monitor and management the business performance of an enterprise. Years ago, businesses simply looked at financial statements balance sheets and income statements as the only measurement of performance. But as we ve entered the digital age and more and more data is available, businesses are now taking a more rigorous, in-depth approach to managing corporate performance. The risky behavior of some financial institutions in the mid-2000s led to $700 billion in bank bailouts by the government in late 2008, a tipping point leading to another US recession. Government and the private sector clamored for reform to restore financial stability and protect against a recurrence. That reform, coupled with increased competitive pressures drove more financial institutions looking for performance management solutions to support their business in recent years. At Axiom EPM, we understand that banks and credit unions require agile performance management solutions with the sophistication and power to meet the complex needs of their organizations. Axiom EPM for Financial Institutions offers a single unified performance management platform, combining industry specific functionality with Axiom EPM s robust technology capabilities. The following case studies are a sampling of real results experienced by banks and credit unions that leverage Axiom EPM s performance management solutions. 2 Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions
Excel-based budgeting and planning taken to a new level OSU Federal Credit Union OSU Federal Your Community Credit Union is a federally-chartered community-based credit union in Oregon with branches in Benton, Lincoln, Linn, Marion and Polk counties. For 59 years, OSU Federal has been a member-owned, not-for-profit financial institution. Earnings are returned to the credit union s members in the form of competitive financial offerings, more personalized service and convenience. Today, OSU Federal is a thriving financial cooperative with more than $780 million in assets and 200 employees. OSU Federal Credit Union was facing several challenges related to enterprise performance management: They sought a solution to streamline the annual budget planning process, leveraging their in-house Excel knowledge. They needed specific security and role-based permissions to control access to data and reports. They wanted a solution that came with consistent support and vertical expertise. OSU Federal Credit Union recognized that Axiom EPM could offer a solution that capitalized on the company s existing investment in and knowledge of Microsoft Excel, while transforming simple spreadsheets into a highly scalable enterprise-grade application suite. OSU Federal particularly benefited from Axiom EPM s table structure, and found it could add information and calculations that previously had to be processed separately in Excel. As a financial organization, OSU Federal also placed great confidence in Axiom EPM s security and permissionbased rules. The ability to manage security and permissions at many and varied levels was crucial. For example, specific departmental reports require access rights for a small subset of users, and it is important to be able to stipulate which managers can read which reports, and who has permission to change reports or the database. A strong business relationship with Axiom EPM was important to the OSU Federal team, particularly during the transition period from their prior solution. It found Axiom EPM personnel to be knowledgeable and efficient, with a leading edge consulting team that helped take the firm s performance management platform to the next level during implementation. The Axiom EPM team also worked to ensure that the change to Axiom EPM was as painless as possible for managers who are infrequent users so that end users found the system to be entirely familiar. OSU Federal is very happy to have a system that is flexible and can continue to be modified to fit its precise needs as the organization evolves. They feel that Axiom EPM works logically, enabling data to be easily manipulated and modeled with a high degree of accuracy and reliability crucial qualities for budgeting, planning and financial reporting. We have the confidence that when industry, consumer or business needs arise, we will be able to use Axiom EPM as a truly centralized, enterprise-level modeling environment to meet the challenges we face. Kate Wasechek, Accounting Manager 3 Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions
Process automation reduces time spent and improves accuracy Credit Union of Texas Credit Union of Texas is a community-based credit union that provides individual and business members across Texas and the United States with a wide range of financial services through ten Dallas-area branches. Today, Credit Union of Texas is one of the top 100 credit unions in the country based on asset size, with over 145,000 members in all fifty states. With over a billion dollars in assets and 350 employees, member-owned Credit Union of Texas remains fully committed to its members. Credit Union of Texas was facing several challenges related to enterprise performance management: They needed to replace their legacy enterprise performance management system which could no longer support the needs of their credit union. They needed to reduce time spent and errors made consolidating budgets manually by automating that process. They wanted to automate the running of balance sheets and income statements to answer specific questions. After selecting Axiom EPM for its budgeting system, Credit Union of Texas was able to automate processes that it had originally completed manually, which streamlined and simplified its budgeting activities. With Axiom EPM in place, they implemented an automated process allowing the credit union to complete all of their budgeting processes within the system at a touch of a button. In addition, Credit Union of Texas has been able to completely automate its consolidation process on the Axiom EPM platform. In the past, financial departments would generate consolidated budgets manually, making month-end budgeting tedious and inefficient. With Axiom EPM s automated process, Credit Union of Texas is able to consolidate its budget 12 months in advance, eliminating the need to run manual processes on a monthly basis. Most significantly, Credit Union of Texas was able to automate the balancing features during its budgeting process. Now when it runs its balance sheets and income statements, the automated processes answer important questions within the system such as Do I have more cash? and Do I have more liabilities? without any need to manually calculate balance sheets. As Credit Union of Texas continues to work with Axiom EPM to perfect its budgeting process, the CFO and her team are confident that the platform will continue to grow alongside the needs of the organization. In addition to the improvements Axiom EPM has brought to the budgeting process at Credit Union of Texas, the working relationship created over the implementation process was equally as important. Axiom EPMs s consultants are highly versed in working with both IT and finance teams so they were able to help Credit Union of Texas complete their goals, and plan for future needs as well. Axiom EPM provided us with what we needed to get the job done, and left us with room to grow and the ability to take advantage of future opportunities. They worked with us to complete our goals, were very in tune with our needs, and always delivered on what we wanted. Karen Miracle, CFO 4 Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions
Understanding profitability across the organization STAR Financial Bank STAR Financial Bank is one of the largest privately held community banks in Indiana. It includes 48 locations, $1.6 billion in assets and 660 employees offering services in banking, insurance, trust, wealth management and private banking. STAR Financial Bank was facing several challenges related to enterprise performance management: They lacked the measurement and insight into profitability of their institution, making it difficult to impact profitability going forward. They wanted a solution that was tailored to the needs of their bank, not a horizontal enterprise performance management solution implemented by people who had never worked in banking. They needed a solution that was intuitive and easy to use for the Finance team as well as the Executive team and other bank employees outside of Finance who are involved in the budgeting process. STAR chose the Axiom EPM platform for a variety of reasons but profitability measurement was a significant factor. STAR chose Axiom EPM because of its comprehensive profitability solution that pulls all the pieces together. As a result, the bank now has complete visibility into which customers, products, channels and services drive the greatest value. The reporting has allowed the business to have a greater transparency and understanding of profitability and even get to the lowest levels of data and roll that up into specific segments. Ease of use was another factor in choosing Axiom EPM. Finance owns the system and can edit or create components without having to consult with IT given Axiom EPM s intuitive and easy-to-use interface that is built on familiar Excel syntax. Users can work more quickly and efficiently thanks to Axiom s unique save back feature, which enabled the bank to reduce its number of reports by a ratio of four to one. Axiom is also easy for the STAR Bank executives to use which is extremely important because it provides a single source of truth for all decision making. To address STAR Bank s unique banking needs, it implemented several of Axiom EPM s banking solutions including budgeting and planning, profitability and cash flow planning because they were designed by Finance experts who ve worked at banks and credit unions and have tailored and implemented these solutions for financial institutions. STAR Bank is realizing significant benefits using the Axiom platform. It implemented robust profitability reporting to gather granular insight into what exactly is impacting profitability. It eliminated manual data entry and compilation so Finance has the time and ability to advise management on key business decisions. The solution was designed and implemented by finance experts who speak the same language and offer the market-based functionality the bank demands. Finally, it gained a solution backed by a world-class support team. In the future, STAR Bank is considering leveraging other Axiom EPM solutions including funds transfer pricing and incentive compensation management. Axiom's reporting has allowed the business as a whole to have a greater transparency and understanding of profitability. Mark Hutchinson, AVP of Cost Accounting and Profitability 5 Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions
Modeling the uncertain future Mesirow Financial Since 1937, Mesirow Financial has been an independent, employee-owned company that fosters a culture of innovation, integrity and long-term relationships. Today, Mesirow Financial has nearly 1,200 employees of which 25% have ownership in the firm and offers expertise in investment management, insurance services, global markets and consulting. Mesirow Financial was facing two challenges related to enterprise performance management: They were looking for a highly flexible and customizable solution that incorporated their best practices and processes. They needed a solution to model various scenarios and produce the associated reporting to support decision making. Before selecting to partner with Axiom EPM, Mesirow Financial researched as many as 30 performance management vendor solutions, following a full RFP process and thorough due diligence. The firm determined Axiom EPM was the best choice based on the ability to deliver an agile solution for on-the-fly, top-down and bottom-up financial planning and reporting, with full remote access capabilities, tight integration with the firm s virtual environment, and the flexibility to plan scenarios and build models using diverse data sources. Axiom EPM delivers scenario planning and latest estimate functionality a feature that now allows Mesirow Financial to report financial accountability down to the level of individual business units providing actionable information about not only current performance, but also how to achieve future objectives. With its legacy planning and reporting tool, Mesirow Financial s financial team was expending 60%-70% of its effort and time on data generation and gathering, and just 30%-40% on review and analysis. In contrast, with just the first round of tooling to Axiom EPM completed, the team now spends just 40% on data generation, leaving 60% for value-added analytics. More than just saving time overall, the team greatly appreciated this proportional shift in how they expended resources. In addition, they find that the robust and flexible Axiom solution enables a broad range of methodologies and controls that can be used at various levels, including by business unit and department and even individual employee, which is particularly useful for file processing, allocations and sophisticated occupancy calculations. We were looking for more than just a vendor. We were looking for a strategic partner that shares a similar company culture, customer focus and entrepreneurial drive. Erin Lavelle, SVP of Finance 6 Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions
Automating Loan Credit Quality Migration ANB Bank Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, ANB Bank is an independent banking organization with over $2 billion in assets and more than 30 full-service locations. For years the group was a loyal user of a well-known EPM solution leveraged by numerous banks and credit unions, but increasingly weak support and an upcoming software sunset required a new solution. ANB Bank was facing two challenges related to enterprise performance management: They needed to streamline their financial and management reporting and reduce the time needed to produce reports. They wanted to automate their loan portfolio tracking to analyze risk and quantify reserves needed. Of the many solutions in the market, Axiom EPM offered the best balance of ease of use and robust capabilities - the learning curve was short, data is consolidated in one central source, and the automation of numerous manual processes frees up time for critical analysis and business decisions. Prior to Axiom EPM, inefficient manual tasks resulted in a large amount of squandered time. With the implementation of automation features and dynamic reporting, the group is saving significant time and receiving reliable results. For example, the group has automated daily interest and accretion calculations, set-up automatic monthly reconciliation reminder emails for staff members and built live department allocation tables which no longer require time-intensive calculations in Excel. With Axiom EPM s Loan Credit Quality Migration solution, ANB Bank automated their loan portfolio tracking, taking the reporting process from days down to a few hours. Axiom EPM immediately eliminated the manual data entry and consolidating done by hand by automatically importing all the data sources - including GL, loan, deposit and overdraft - and consolidating it into a single source. With interactive reporting, ANB Bank has the flexibility to slice and dice the data however they want to support their allowance for loan loss calculation. ANB Bank has embraced the robust capabilities of Axiom EPM for as many processes as possible. As a result, the group is working more efficiently and all data is in one consolidated source to drive more timely and informed business decisions. Moving forward, ANB plans to implement Axiom EPM s dashboarding capabilities for loan histories and budget information so executives can easily access highly visualized performance results and drill down into specific details. The group also plans to use Axiom EPM for call reports and annual reports and schedules. With Axiom EPM, we ve seen huge increases in efficiency and capabilities. It would be hard to imagine that another solutions could so all that Axiom EPM does for our group. Grant Slovek, Financial Reporting & Budgeting Manager 7 Performance Management s Drive in Financial Institutions