Using Analytics To Reduce Operational Costs

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Building society uses analytics software to meet regulatory requirements

Leek United Building Society has chosen business intelligence specialist Connexica’s CXAIR software to streamline its regulatory reporting. The software enables staff from different departments in the company, such as savings, finance and mortgages, to produce their own, numerous regulatory reports. This allows each department to take ownership of reporting, with the confidence that company-wide data is accurate.

Legislative bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) require banks to regularly produce a large number of reports to comply with regulatory requirements. By sharing the responsibility of reports across the building society’s departments, this allows for department accountability, with each department focusing on their area of expertise. It also means that the reports are produced more accurately and efficiently as the reporting is shared across the organisation.

Leek United Building Society is now using Connexica’s CXAIR software to allow each department to control its own reports. The software achieves this by using natural language search, rather than complex SQL queries like many business analytics solutions. This allows non-IT professionals to effectively access and draw insight from a wide range of disparate data streams, while also being able to generate reports directly from the software.

Despite the complexities of reporting across a number of different financial systems, CXAIR has easily integrated into Leek United Building Society’s system. This is due to the system using an open architecture design, meaning it can work with any existing software.

“Being able to integrate an analytics tool that can draw on various data sources and automatically produce reports in minutes is exactly what we needed,” said Stephen Boulton, Head of IT and Admin Services at the building society. “Rather than one person spending hours searching through spread sheets and databases and then compiling a report, we now have a tool that completely negates this laborious process.”

Traditionally, Leek United Building Society’s IT department had the sole responsibility of generating the necessary reports, meaning that the other departments did not have an input into reports that concerned their line of work.

“Our approach to analytics is all about the democratisation of business intelligence,” explained Daniel Rostron at Connexica. “This means that data is not only collected, but is gathered in an understandable way with easy cross-referencing. Therefore, anyone can look at data and convert it into visually appealing and clear reports, without relying heavily on the IT department.

“This enhanced control and comprehension means department leaders and decision makers will actively use reports to make strategic decisions, rather than simply fulfilling regulatory requirements. This also frees up the IT department to develop the building society’s systems to progress with the changing landscape of financial services.”

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