The Challenge
Coastal Community Credit Union (CCCU) is the largest Vancouver Island-based financial services organization and the 23rd largest credit union in Canada when measured by asset size. CCCU provides a full range of products and services in personal, business and commercial banking. Management had identified an opportunity to review the processes of the Lending and Risk department to identify if capacity can be improved to support the growth of the organization. To assist with this initiative, Propel Solutions was engaged by CCCU to conduct a five-day onsite business process analysis of CCCU’s Lending and Risk Departments.
The Objective
- Process Review: Propel conducted a review of the current processes to determine opportunities for improving capacity throughout the departments. This was done through interviewing staff, observing work practices, and creating detailed process maps that were critiqued by managers and staff. The resulting “as-is analysis” was used to identify opportunities for process improvements.
- Financial Analysis: A Profit Driver Model was developed to demonstrate the linkages between the cost and revenue drivers of the organization. Using this model, the total cost per application in Lending was analyzed as well as cost per collection in Risk. From here the impact of changing the organizational targets can be modeled to help determine specific improvement objectives in terms of financial and capacity improvement.
- Management Toolkit Analysis: Propel conducted a review of the tools Managers in the department use to manage processes in their area including Business Strategy, Forecasting, Planning, Execution Control, and Reports. From this analysis, Propel was able to identify missing tools that should be developed in order to increase visibility throughout the areas.
The Results
Staff engagement throughout the Propel Analysis was high with over 60 opportunities for improvement identified. The Business Process Analysis provided CCCU with baseline measures of their current state. It showed the opportunity to introduce a Management Toolkit to improve the management of key processes, leverage systems to improve reporting, and increase visibility through daily and weekly reporting of results and Key Performance Indicators. Propel determined that through a comprehensive Business Process Review, CCCU could improve the capacity of the departments through introducing process changes, with an anticipated reduction of 20% of the non value-added time in the processes.
