Case Study: North Shore Credit Union

North Shore Credit Union (NSCU) is a strong and vibrant financial institution with $1.7 billion in assets under administration, 40,000 members and 12 branches.  For the last 63 years, NSCU has offered banking, insurance, investment and business services. They are an innovative organization that attributes their success to adapting products to the needs of their members. 

North Shore Credit Union is committed to being an industry leader while contributing to the community as a socially, ethically and environmentally responsible organization.  Their credo states “We must encourage and support co-operation throughout our business, recognizing that the results of our collective efforts exceed the sum of our individual efforts.”

The Search for a New Solution

North Shore Credit Union’s recent growth has highlighted the importance of investing in a Financial Management System that would support management and administrative operations.

“Reporting” out of their aging financial system was cited as their greatest pain.  They described their system as “inefficient and out of date.”  Capabilities were limited and modifications expensive, forcing them to extract data from the mainframe through the Trial Balance and into Microsoft Excel for financial reporting.

Staff liked the flexibility of Excel, but spreadsheets had become too big and unwieldy, and external links took up a lot of memory.  “As we looked forward with the planned growth of the organization, we realized the serious future limitations utilizing Excel beyond its intended capabilities,” said Ejaz Sadaruddin, Vice President and CFO.  These slow, lengthy processes cost valuable time, meaning data was only extracted once a month. They had outgrown their system, and knew that before any further expansion could happen, a change in their financial system would be necessary.

North Shore Credit Union began searching for a new solution.  As a business strategy, they wanted to expand by adding branches without an increase in finance staff and they wanted to build a foundation for improved performance reporting.  They believed in Microsoft as a widely accepted and supportable solution. 

In addition, after decades of being tied to a mainframe service, self-sufficiency was high on the priority list, provided the solution was also backed by reliable and expert local support.  North Shore Credit Union selected Microsoft Business Solutions’ Navision to replace their existing financial application, and The RSC Group, Western Canada’s most experienced Microsoft Business Solution partner, to provide implementation services.

The Microsoft Business Solutions Experience

The implementation was an “on time, on budget” success and an almost textbook example of effective client and consultant cooperation.  On Navision, NSCU’S data is much more accessible to users, who can query and filter data on screen, or drill-down to details.  “We now have information stored in a central database allowing us to quickly query data to generate reports and publish to Excel,” indicates Emily Watkins, Assistant Controller.  “The users found it easy to use.”

North Shore Credit Union invested in custom development to tailor Navision to their unique requirements.  “Ken Hebden, RSC’s Senior Developer, was great!  Both Suzan and Ken were there when we needed them, even if it was at a moment’s notice,” said Tosha Silver, Assistant Controller.  RSC also created an integration from the banking system that imports 15,000 general journal lines each day and incorporated a matching process for bank reconciliation transactions.  The next step is to automate the import with a polling utility and email notification.  Louise DeVita, Controller, states, “We would absolutely recommend The RSC Group.”

RSC’s Project Manager, Suzan Riedel, credited their strength as a client, “North Shore Credit Union provided an excellent project team.  They worked hard and took ownership of the system, and it shows in the self-sufficiency they have achieved.”  North Shore Credit Union went live on Navision in November 2004, completed their budgeting cycle in December, performed a year-end in January 2005, and completed an external audit in February.  Suzan declared, “That’s a huge accomplishment.”  North Shore Credit Union celebrated the success of their Navision implementation with a catered event for the entire implementation team.

Beyond the capabilities of the software, NSCU was also pleased with RSC’s implementation methodology and project management.  Louise explains, “The plan was laid out and they kept us focused and on track.  We met our goal of transitioning before the end of the year.  Financial statements were done four days after the first month end.” 

Looking Forward

The CFO states “North Shore Credit Union helps their members achieve financial wellness.  Implementing Microsoft Business Solutions Navision positions North Shore Credit Union for growth and lays the foundation for realizing our dream of an integrated solution for reporting and analytics. Selecting the Microsoft SQL database also supports the organization-wide reporting improvement initiative.  We look forward to building more reports that query across databases to provide greater insight into product and member relationships”.