Case Studies » Major National Credit Union

Vision and strategy

Creating organizational alignment around a clear strategy to improve member experience

Digital transformation not only improved experiences, but it boosted bottom-line goals by $3 billion.

A national credit union needed to accelerate the transition to its new mortgage loan origination platform. They purchased it three years earlier and invested $33 million in it, but only had 10% of their loan volume on it.

Frustrations were mounting everywhere. The business leaders were frustrated that IT operations frequently missed deadlines. IT operations was frustrated that business leaders kept changing priorities and could not clearly articulate what they wanted.

But it didn’t end there. Line employees were frustrated having to operate in dual systems. And with a looming deadline of losing compliance support on the existing platform, they faced the prospect of reverting to manual processes to fulfill a growing regimen of regulatory demands.

Finally, members were frustrated. They would often drop the loan applications they started due to the cumbersome interface and slow service. The credit union was losing revenue.

If the situation didn’t reach its inflection point soon, the fallout could be devastating for the credit union. They called Celerity to help get their platform migration back on track. To do so would require figuring out why the migration was stuck in the first place. It would also require getting the teams to work better together.

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Digital transformation not only improved experiences, but it boosted bottom-line goals by $3 billion.

Finally, members were frustrated. They would often drop the loan applications they started due to the cumbersome interface and slow service. The credit union was losing revenue.

Searching for the vision and strategy needed for digital transformation

Celerity began the initiative by interviewing 35 stakeholders to gain a comprehensive view of the situation. We interviewed SVPs, managers, IT operations, IT support, the platform vendor and others on topics from strategy and communication to the vendor relationship. This allowed us to gain an impartial, broad-based understanding of the current state.

What we found was that nobody could clearly articulate the vision and strategy for the platform migration. With no clear strategy, the business also lacked a plan for migrating loan volume onto the platform in a timely manner, frequently prioritizing lower value projects. When their work failed to move the needle, the business would shift priorities again.

Aligning the organization around a good vision and strategy

Celerity solved the problem at the root by helping formulate a good vision and strategy. We met with the client to help set an ambitious vision of increasing loan volume from $17 to $20 billion in two years. We also recast the migration as not just as a chore to perform, but as the means to achieve growth through an improved digital transformation strategy.

We then helped set the strategy of making the platform migration the overriding enterprise priority and developed a minimum viable product (MVP), volume-based approach to the migration. This prioritized getting the basic configuration for the largest loan products online, accelerating the migration of loan volume to the new system and sunsetting the old system sooner.

To align the organization around this vision and strategy, Celerity:

Held a workshop with business leadership where they found that the platform migration was the common thread between them all. They agreed the migration was the most important common initiative.
Met with the same group to plan how to accelerate migration to the new platform. The Celerity team introduced the team to the MVP volume-based approach.
Held workshops with IT operations to get them aligned and showed them how they often got distracted by lower value tasks. This inspired them to commit to focus on the basic configuration of the new platform as their top priority.
Advised on implementing the new member-facing system via an MVP product strategy, as well as routing only loans from the new system to the new platform. This had the added advantage of eliminating the need to integrate the two platforms.

Delivering digital transformation, organizational alignment, and an extra $3 billion in loans

As a result of Celerity helping shift the mindset of the organization, migration to the new lending platform accelerated dramatically—55% of total loan volume was moved onto the new platform in just six months. Leveraging the same vision and strategy, the teams replaced the member-facing platform within those 6 months as well. This combination helped them increase their loan applications threefold as well as improve the member experience. And, as the old system got closer to its sunset, the more employee experience and morale improved as well.

Best of all, Celerity helped make the bank wealthier in the process. The business group not only met their goal of $20 billion in loan volume, they exceeded it by $3 billion and made $23 billion.