4 Reasons Overhauling your ECM is an Investment in Growth

Originally published on CUInsight, Alogent's Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Schwabline, speaks to the need for credit unions to take a step beyond just acquiring data, but also to use that intelligence to add transformative value-adds that benefit both the CU and the member. By doing such, and combining this with best practices and systems that scale quickly and effortlessly, the CU is taking active steps in securing a successful future. Read on...

Now more than ever, credit union leadership knows the old mantra, “grow or be acquired” is alive and well, and it’s causing some sleepless nights as they feel the squeeze from all sides.  But, of the countless (and growing) regulatory, technological and competitive hurdles credit unions face today, there is a critical one that too often goes unmentioned — how to not only efficiently manage the staggering volumes of information passing through the CU’s various systems, but to go a step further to transform it into an active value-add.  Enterprise Content Management / Enterprise Information Management (ECM / EIM) may not be as “bright and shiny” as the promise of blockchain banking or the latest wearable tech, but it represents a dramatically understated and misunderstood potential for immediate and long term growth. The shiny piece of this puzzle is information and how we leverage it.

First and foremost, a strong ECM / EIM solution should reduce overhead by automating the repetitive processes of credit union staff. It may not sound like much at first, but consider the time lost to employees manually hunting down and sending documents across multiple databases, day in and day out. Compound that across the entire institution and it quickly adds up. To be a truly innovative solution, an ECM / EIM system should also offer CU leadership the flexibility to tailor their workflows to the institution’s unique needs to maximize efficiency and ROI.

Financial institutions’ content management systems shouldn’t just be for internal document storage, however. In the age of information, credit unions are sitting on troves of valuable member data that can be leveraged to great benefit to the CU, all while strengthening existing relationships. Members enjoy faster, more consistent experiences as staff are now freed to focus on their interactions. Meanwhile, the stored transactional metadata provides crucial business intelligence, enabling the credit union to efficiently develop and deliver more personal targeted offers and promotions that drive ever greater member loyalty.

For many credit union executives, just behind the imperative for growth looms the specter of regulatory compliance. With an ever changing set of guidelines and requirements, CU leaders have to stay flexible while maintaining a competitive edge. To meet those needs, the CU’s choice of ECM / EIM solution should be reflective of that ability to adapt, removing, rather than compounding, one of many compliance headaches credit unions face.

As credit unions look to the future they are continually forced to hone their strategies of how best to scale their operations, and their ECM / EIM solution should be the least of their concerns. Credit unions should put best practices in place early with a system built to scale quickly and effortlessly instead of waiting for often costly red flags to appear. 

Solutions like those offered by Alogent empower credit unions to build a firm ECM / EIM foundation for stronger and longer member relationships while greatly increasing operational efficiency and avoiding disruptions to growth due to new regulatory demands.

In a world where time really is money there’s no replacement for efficiency.

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