American Airlines CU Drives Continuous Improvement

American Airlines Federal Credit Union Drives Continuous Improvement through System Conversion and Data Integration Initiatives

The Challenge

How do you convert to a new core banking system, implement a data warehouse solution, include and integrate all mission-critical core operations and data needed to support the business, develop and automate tracking reports with accurate data, and coordinate completion by one unmovable go-live date? That was the challenge facing American Airlines Federal Credit Union (AAFCU).

Defining The Need & The Opportunities

In addition to moving its core system to Jack Henry’s Episys system, AAFCU was implementing the Advanced Reporting for Credit Unions (ARCU) data warehouse solution. They were also converting to FICS for mortgage servicing, PSCU for credit card servicing, and Meridian Link for consumer loan applications. The Microsoft Access databases used to track sales production at their 43 branches – and generate reports – were to be replaced by the ARCU platform.

To improve operational efficiency, AAFCU needed to automate the Daily Tracking report that went out to all branches, branch management reporting, lending performance reporting, and scorecard reporting.

To do this required integration of data from many sources, including PSCU credit cards, FICS mortgages, participation loans and goals in spreadsheets. Integration of loan applications from Meridian Link was completed in a subsequent phase. It was imperative the integration be completed by the time they cut over to their new Core.

“One of our main goals was to make the reports our branches utilized to run the business more accurate and efficient,” said John Reed, manager of business intelligence. 

“In the old system, each business unit created their own data points in MS Excel or Access. We would have multiple copies pulling from multiple data sources, and using different business definitions. All this data had to be stitched together manually to develop the tracking reports,” he said. “We saw this initiative as a great opportunity to clean up data, remove duplicates, put consistent definitions and processes in place and provide our branches with timely reporting.”