2 ways to tackle analytics. 1 credit union.
Grow Financial’s analytics department has grown from a seedling department into a full-grown resource at the center of the cooperative.
Nearly a decade ago, Grow Financial Federal Credit Union ($2.5B, Tampa, FL) faced a problem to which many other credit unions can relate. Each department within the organization collected large volumes of member data, which helped the credit union make more informed decisions in the moment. However, this decentralized data structure created internal challenges when querying.
“We were getting different answers to the same questions depending on who asked it, how it was asked, and who they asked,” says Emily Nichols, the credit union’s vice president of analytic services.
To solve these issues, Grow needed to centralize its data reporting to answer questions and make better business decisions. In August 2011, Grow started its journey toward centralization. At the time, responsibility for data reporting fell under IT. But because the scope of the project was so large, Grow’s CFO asked Nichols to own the transition herself under a soon-to-be-formed analytics department.
For two months, Nichols interviewed business owners across the organization to understand the organization’s appetite for data. How did business owners query data? How did they use it? What data did they need but not have?
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