How Desert Schools Cut Reporting Time in Half with Solver

0:05 My name is Ann Prettyman. I work for Desert Schools Federal Credit Union. Desert Schools is a $4 billion credit union. We have over 50 branches and 120 supporting departments providing financial services in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

0:21 Our main challenges were with FRx. There wasn't a lot of formatting. Our budgeting model pushed Excel to its limits, and a lot of it was manual. Doing all of that manual compilation of data required so much time to actually produce our financials and our budget that there wasn't a lot of time left to do any analysis.

0:48 BI360 allows us to do complex calculations. It has an Excel interface, which provides easy training to all of our departments.

0:55 We're currently using the data warehouse, where we can input non-financial information, which is stored and available for reporting.

1:08 All of our board reporting and statistical information is gathered into the data warehouse, which makes it extremely easy to just push a button and have all of our reports generated.

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1:32 The system is very easy to use. It's mostly point-and-click, and even non-technical people are able to write reports.

1:42 We use BI360 for all of our general reporting—balance sheets, income statements, budget variances, and daily, monthly, quarterly, and year-to-date reporting.

1:57 We can also compare results to the prior year or any other year that you have stored in the data warehouse.

2:04 We push out responsibility center reporting, which includes detailed P&Ls by branch and department.

2:11 Each of our departments then performs an analysis of all of their variances.

2:19 We're able to produce ratio analysis using non-financial data such as headcount, square footage, or whatever information is needed to perform calculations. You can create custom fields and store that in the data warehouse.

2:36 We do general ledger detail reports where managers can drill into their actual numbers on reports and dive down to see the details.

2:54 Our fixed assets and prepaids are another really cool feature. Managers can actually see, instead of just looking at a general ledger line that says depreciation for the month, exactly which assets are being depreciated and what was budgeted for them.

3:10 They're able to be more accountable and responsible for their budgeting.

3:19 BI360 has reduced our processing time and probably cut it in half.

3:29 We have three companies that we have to consolidate, and each of those companies has different metrics and reporting requirements.

3:38 We now have more time for review and analysis, and it's also reduced our data input errors.

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3:53 Our centers are able to do ad hoc and customized reporting. The tool is extremely simple and easy to train.

4:02 It makes our entire reporting and budgeting process seamless.

4:09 We're going to extend BI360 and merge it into our global data warehouse.

4:16 That is our core system. We'll then be able to produce our regulatory reporting and create even more efficiencies.

4:23 One of our previous problems was that data came to us through email or spreadsheets. We had to capture that information and enter it manually in order to create reports.

4:39 Now that we have a place to store all of the data we need to create reports, we'll be able to automate all of our regulatory reporting.

4:48 We're also looking forward to implementing workflow and additional internal controls into the financial reporting and budgeting process.