Dundalk Credit Union - A Customer Story
Dundalk Credit Union is a member-owned financial cooperative that provides financial services to its community. Established in 1968, Dundalk Credit Union is today one of the largest Credit Unions in Ireland with assets approaching €300m and over 45,000 members. Its core purpose is to deliver financial independence, wellbeing and opportunity for people and families and to support the development of a stronger, more sustainable community and economy in the region. The Credit Union landscape has changed significantly in recent years and Dundalk Credit Union has made great efforts to keep pace with an evolving business environment and growing member requirements. The sector is facing increasing levels of compliance following the introduction of the new Credit Union Act, as well as being impacted by other legislation covering areas such as Anti-Money Laundering and Data Protection.
Challenges
These recent developments add to the compliance and regulatory burden that staff, senior managers, Directors and Board Oversight Committee members need to understand and comply with. The challenges identified by the Credit Union around board meetings included:
Board pack processes needed to be updated as they were cumbersome and time-consuming.
Effective time management was increasingly important as staff need to achieve more with the same or reduced resources.
Need for increased levels of information security to better manage access both inside and outside the organisation.
Something Had To Change
Historically, Jackie Curran, Executive Assistant to the CEO, would spend a considerable amount of time creating, collating and distributing meeting packs for the Board and Committees. Recently the organisation had migrated from paper to digital meeting papers, converting them to PDFs and emailing files to the individual attendees. Depending on file size, these papers often needed to be sent in two or three separate emails, complicating the process further in both time and effort.
Faced with this situation the team at Dundalk Credit Union began to research board portals. Damien Rooney, Director at Dundalk Credit Union, explained the motivations of the Board to move away from a paper-based system.
"Paper packs were often received at late notice which meant our preparation time was rather tight. That extra level of pressure and concerns over the security of paper packs was something we were keen to alleviate. We knew that there was a better way of doing things and wanted to make the best use of technology to solve it."
The Solution
After seeing a demonstration of Decision Time it was clear that Dundalk Credit Union’s challenges in preparing and distributing meeting packs could be solved. The software also offered benefits to Board members and its ease of use would be critical in ensuring a successful adoption of the new technology for a Board with varying IT abilities.
"Those who had taken part in the demo presented the benefits to the board. We were all in agreement that this system was going to tick many of the boxes so we gave our approval. We could see that it would help the organisers deliver the papers to us earlier than before. When the search function was demonstrated we knew instantly that it would help us to easily find what we were looking for."
Decision Time's security credentials were also a major step forward as the software offered a simple way to control who had access to what information while storing all the information in a controlled, encrypted environment.
"It provides me with an extremely easy way to securely distribute meeting packs and schedule the meetings in their diary."
The Outcome
As with all Decision Time installations a tailored implementation plan was created. This results in a simple, stress free process lasting just a few weeks. From day one the system was a great help for meeting organisers and delivered exactly what was promised.
"There has been a huge reduction in colour printing as well as better use of my time. Prior to the introduction of the software, I would have spent approximately 1 day per month printing Board and Committee papers, collating 16 packs, each of which contained approximately 20 individual reports."
Another unexpected benefit was the ease and speed of which documents could be distributed. With templates for each Board and Committee created, it was a simple case of adding the reports as they arrived. Late submissions or amendments could easily be managed even after the pack had been released.
"As soon as documents were ready I was able to upload them and notify attendees. The ease with which I could make changes to the meeting pack was a very welcome benefit. Prior to Decision Time this would have been difficult and time-consuming, meaning that I was reluctant to distribute the pack until I was 100% sure that it was complete and accurate, which could delay its release.”
The Board soon found this new way of preparing for and conducting meetings a huge improvement and the ability to store years worth of archived meeting papers gave them the historical information they needed:
"One of the most immediate benefits was having more preparation time as the papers were generally delivered earlier than before. There was also the peace of mind that our access to documents was much more secure than before, not to mention a lot more convenient. It really helped us as the Board to become better informed. I can access all the meeting papers I’ve ever been invited to. It’s very valuable for the Board to have access to all this historical data. I feel better informed and better prepared for meetings as a result. The Task Manager helps us improve the transparency. We all know who’s responsible for what tasks and whether they’ve been completed."
Damien Rooney summarised his experience,
"The benefit to the Board in general has been great. The quality of our Boardroom conversations has been improved because we’re better prepared and can focus more on the relevant part