Not your father’s dashboard

Although business dashboards have existed for years, they are experiencing something of a resurgence. New financial products, digital communications and the increasing dominance of social media have all combined to create an overwhelming influx of consumer data. As financial institutions of all types, including credit unions, struggle with ever-increasing amount of third-party and proprietary information, dashboards are reemerging as a possible solution to manage the deluge.

Data management tools of today, however, are far from your father’s dashboard. They happen to be one of the critical components of business intelligence and analytics, which is a top investment priority for leaders in almost all industries.

Modern business dashboards have evolved to not only gather massive amounts of data, but also to sort and structure it so the information can be visualized. This allows decision makers to understand consumer needs more readily – often in real time. Today’s dashboards can be built to match the priorities of credit unions, be they digital engagement, operational efficiencies, financial metrics or others. Refreshed in real time, the tools are far more timely than they have been in the past, resulting in a quick call to action.

Dashboards today are much improved as compared with their earlier models. They are designed to consolidate and manage large quantities of data from various sources. Many of them can be customized, allowing variables to change for a relevant view of target consumers, existing customers and prospects as business goals change.

Apart from giving a quick look into meaningful data, dashboards tend to be great tools for creating efficiencies. The main reason being that most of them are automated and can be implemented through third-party solutions; furthermore dashboards eliminate the need for full-time, in-house analysts and programmers. When used across an entire credit union, they help individual departments focus better on the data relevant to their goals. Departments use these sophisticated tools to easily monitor data relevant to things like growth of membership, product penetration and bottom line performance.

Ultimately, the right dashboard solution allows credit union management to stay connected with performance data measuring three key drivers of growth: member engagement, transaction volumes and product performance.

Member Engagement

Dashboards developed for measuring the engagement level of members provide summary data on key success measures along with secondary measures. These measures include data on factors, such as transaction volume per member or products per member.

Transaction Volumes

Dashboards developed for monitoring credit and debit transactions – and increasingly, digital wallets – include primary measures for success, such as the volume of active cardholders, transaction amounts and activity level. A credit union may also choose to monitor factors such as interchange income or earned, expired and redeemed rewards.

Today’s dashboards help credit unions track member behavior in real time. This allows decision makers, particularly those in marketing, to evaluate the success of different campaigns more quickly.

Product Performance

Dashboards relied on to manage products measure and track major indicators, such as new account openings, timeline by account type, cross-sell average and automated payments. Credit unions that supply different sales target for different branches find great value in dashboard tools that help monitor each team’s progress toward the goal.

The next-generation dashboards in the market today are helping credit unions participate and compete in the big data revolution. They are an effective and cost-efficient tool for measuring the real-time parameters that are vital to delivering hyper-personalized banking experiences that consumers prefer. As the financial services industry transforms to include new players who are skilled at analyzing data for greater experiences, dashboards will become an essential tool in the battle for relevancy.