BPM:Have you found that your forecasts are now more accurate?

Smith: Yes. I'll go back to the banking volumes. In the past, it was a spreadsheet that the banking department did. We have tiered pricing in some products. They would know what the price was per tier, but they would have to make certain assumptions as to the volume for each month. What tier would it fall into? They would have to make assumptions to come up with a consolidated revenue projection. Whereas if we use Khalix, because we have the volumes by credit union, we can apply those same pricing tiers on a credit union­by­credit union basis. And the only assumptions we have to make are based on volume growth over previous periods. It'll actually allocate and calculate the pricing by credit union in each tier. So it's a lot more precise.

BPM:Has having a consolidated BPM system also improved your organization's reporting?

Smith: Yes. I think the benefits boil down to three things: It provides timely, accurate, reliable reporting. That's a major focus in organizations these days -- getting the results out as quickly as you can, but also making sure that the numbers are right and you can rely on them. When we were back in the spreadsheet world, we'd have one spreadsheet for financial reporting and a different spreadsheet for budgeting. With all the shared cost allocations and management support formulas we used to use, if a last-minute adjustment or change in allocation was made but wasn't entered in both of those spreadsheets, we'd have to go through a reconciliation process at the end of the year to explain why our departments' annual net contribution in the budget was different from the net contribution that we were using for financial reporting purposes.

Now a lot of that is eliminated because we're using the same allocations for both reporting and budgeting. You change them once, and it changes them for both. It's saving time -- because we can spend more time now reviewing what's been done, as opposed to just consolidating and getting a corporate view -- and it's also making the data more reliable.

BPM:Have you found any other benefits of replacing spreadsheets with a BPM system?

Smith: I mentioned earlier all the customer information we maintain in the Khalix database. We've extended that to include customer profitability. We have always maintained revenues and interest expense by member credit union within both our general ledger and Khalix. By applying standard costs to each of the banking volumes, we can compare that to the total revenue by credit union and get a better understanding of the profitability that each member contributes to Central's operations.

This information was critical in helping us successfully respond to an RFP from two large member credit unions in 2005. In one case it helped us maintain the existing volumes, and with the other credit union we were able to bring in new business. It also is very useful information to help us provide better service by analyzing what products may be beneficial to our members to help them succeed and grow.