Pitney Bowes case study on BECU

Challenge

To provide employees with a 360 degree view of each member. BECU wanted a way to access complete member records from multiple data sources using a single resource. In addition, this data then needed to be transformed into rich information to drive mission-critical analyses and decisions.

Solution

BECU chose Data Flow to bring data integration and business intelligence to the organization. This resulted in the creation of a comprehensive data warehouse and the 360 degree view of each member to be leveraged for exceptional member service. This cleansed data was then integrated into the AnySite analytic tool to power its site selection strategy and marketing efforts.

Summary

Founded in 1935 by 25 Boeing employees, BECU (formally known as Boeing Employees’ Credit Union) is the fourth largest credit union in the country based on both asset size ($8.5 billion) and membership (approaching 600,000 members). BECU now has approximately 1,000 employees who are predominantly located in the Puget Sound area. It has two major financial centers in Washington along with a network of over 45 cashless Neighborhood Financial Centers (“NFC’s). BECU is very member-focused and provides a full suite of financial services including savings products, mortgages, loans and wealth management services.

To enable more effective market and member growth strategies, BECU needed a solution that could offer a unique perspective on both location and identity intelligence. For member identities, member data needed to be centralized into one single repository that’s quickly available to employees. Specifically, BECU wanted to make sure that any changes to member accounts would be recorded and available to its staff in real-time.

In 1999, BECU began using Data FlowTM, the pipelined data processing engine that implements data integration, data analysis and information delivery services that make it easy for BECU to extend the accessibility and usefulness of member data. Upon implementation, two groups of Data Flow users developed:

Weblink users: 200 users who are out in the field and interested in knowing the immediate status of branch production and specific member information. They continually access this information over the web from reports created by in-house analysts.

Power users: 60 to 70 users who do intensive analytical research to gain valuable insight into member data, such as, how well BECU markets a particular product to target members, which ATMs members are using, and where members are conducting their transactions. These users receive a complete view into member activity and can manipulate the data to create meaningful reports.

Next, BECU took steps to seamlessly integrate location into its existing business processes. In 2007, the credit union added a location component to its business intelligence strategy when it implemented the AnySite® site analysis and decision support solution. Designed to perform display analytics and modeling functions, the open architecture allowed BECU to incorporate data formatted by Data Flow and use it to analyze the relationship between the credit union’s performance and trade area demographics.

Result

According to Market Research Analyst Calvin Bierley, the combined solution enables BECU to effectively conduct saturation and regression analysis and see where the greatest potential exists to add or close retail sites. To date, BECU has used the technology as the basis for its decisions on where and when to open 10 new branch locations, which the credit union calls Neighborhood Financial Centers.

“Prior to using AnySite, we knew there were $100 billion in deposits reported by financial institutions in Washington State, but that was reported by branch location and we did not know where individual customers were located that held these deposits,” said Bierley. “With AnySite, we can see the demographic specifics and pinpoint the areas where we needed to market more effectively, or even place a new branch, to increase the volume of our deposits.”

Bierley has used Data Flow in conjunction with AnySite for several mission-critical projects. For example, the BECU board needed to know if the credit union was close to reaching a saturation point with member penetration in the Puget Sound area. The board questioned whether or not potential oversaturation would put itself at risk of impeding historical growth numbers— a 10 percent increase year over year.

Bierley explained, “I pulled the information from Data Flow on the number of members by address, along with their balances and services they were using, and made it accessible to AnySite. Then by using AnySite, I was able to define trade areas around nearly 40 BECU retail locations and see what the penetration was by specific micro-markets around the retail sites. Not only could I clearly see what the growth had been over the past three years, but I leveraged the model’s predictive capability to see what the projected growth would be for the next five years.”

Business Intelligence Architect, Karrie Cunningham, agrees that the solution’s ease-of-use has resulted in considerable time savings.

“By using Data Flow we have moved the reporting as close to the users who need it as possible,” said Cunningham. “If we did not use Data Flow, we would spend a great deal of time doing ad-hoc report requests within our IT department. Our Oracle and SQL Server DBA’s would be getting tons of requests to write SQL queries and to write files and summarizations so that people could do the same type of thing but through a third party.”

Pitney Bowes , provide location intelligence for new market expansion, franchise delevopment, and real estate planning.