3 minutes
The Challenge
It’s not easy to become the largest credit union in Western Tennessee. To attract over 50,000 members, and over $500 million in assets, Orion Federal Credit Union, Memphis, had to offer a full spectrum of banking options ranging from savings and checking accounts to auto, mortgage and personal loans. But in the path of continued progress stood a mountain of paper documents.
“Before OnBase we were always printing out documents,” says Jeff Watkins, information technology director at Orion FCU.
Employees had to send those documents to the central office for storage, usually at the expense of a courier. Then, other employees had to pull, file and refile those documents by hand – a time consuming process. Wasting time hunting paperwork slowed down every other facet of the organization, affecting both member satisfaction and, ultimately, employee productivity.
Adding to the challenge, Orion FCU processed loans in an assembly line fashion. The people down the line couldn’t begin until someone else finished their work, creating a bottleneck. Paper was slowing everything down, increasing cost and complexity.
The Solution
To overcome a slow, manual process, Orion FCU implemented OnBase in 2009 to improve its loan processing procedure. With OnBase, information is immediately ingested from branch locations and loan processes kick-start automatically. OnBase eliminated the assembly line structure and brought everything into one view—giving users immediate access to loan documents. The availability of any file in the network plus instant access made the loan closing process much faster.
“We were in a place where it was taking about four hours to close a loan. Now we can do it in about 45 minutes,” says Watkins. Since Orion FCU implemented OnBase, it’s able to capture loan documents immediately. Instead of shuffling papers all day, employees now work from queues—and focus on keeping processes flowing. While Orion FCU expected to convert its paper documents, what it didn’t expect was the dramatic increase in efficiency this allowed.
“The biggest benefits of OnBase are efficiency, time savings and organization,” Watkins says. “It’s really helpful for our employees to find all the documents in one location and use the workflows to move the documents through the organization.”
The signature card is a great example. Previously, if a member visited a branch, but his signature card was stored at a different branch, Orion FCU employees had to make phone calls to get copies faxed over. That slowed down the process and eroded member trust.
“Now you just type in the member’s name and you have a complete view of their information in OnBase,” said Watkins.
Not only did OnBase rid Orion FCU of tedious paper processes, it opened up new opportunities for the branch. With OnBase working in the background, member service representatives now retrieve documents and information with the click of a mouse, any time they need to take care of a member.
In 2012, Orion FCU implemented Corelation’s KeyStone as its core banking system to lower operations costs. Since OnBase has become a mission-critical solution at the credit union, Orion FCU integrated OnBase with KeyStone to grant easy access to information across the entire credit union. OnBase is still evolving with Orion FCU, giving employees quick and secure access to documents—so they’re focusing on members and competitive lending instead of searching for information.
The Difference: An integrated, efficient workflow
Because OnBase FCU can ingest a mass inflow of documents, loan processing is smoother, and allows employees time to tackle other priorities.
Employee empowerment and member focus
“I think OnBase has empowered our employees by allowing them the time in between loan closings to spend with our members and understand what they need,” says Watkins. OnBase helped branches become more involved not only in overall member service, but also in selling loans. This eliminated lines in branches and facilitated a more one-on-one experience for members.
