Credit Union Takes Unorthodox Approach to Developing IT System for Member Care

We stress the point that there is no such thing as an IT project. Every project starts with a vision for the member experience that we desire and then works backwards to the technology.”
– Butch Leonardson, Senior VP and CIO, BECU

The credit union BECU took an unorthodox approach to defining its next-generation IT system. BECU sent 10 people from its member solutions group whose primary job was engaging with credit union members to the Disney Institute in Florida for professional training and to develop an IT vision. These were non-technical and non-senior management personnel. “Their charter was to come back with a dream of a member care framework for how we can provide an exceptional experience to our members,” said Butch Leonardson, Senior VP and CIO of BECU.

BECU, headquartered in Tukwila, Washington, is a community charter credit union in the state of Washington. It has 50 branches, 1,000 employees and 730,000 members, the majority of which are clustered around the Interstate 5 corridor in Western Washington.

While it may be unusual to assign staff other than IT and senior management with the task of proposing a major new IT system, it was consistent with BECU’s “outside-in” IT philosophy. Leonardson elaborated, “We stress the point that there is no such thing as an IT project. Every project starts with a vision for the member experience that we desire and then works backwards to the technology.” From this perspective, it made sense to start the IT project with the personnel who were most directly engaged with credit union members.

More to the point, it worked. The group came back with a compelling vision for a member care framework consisting of three parts: Member View which presents a holistic view of each member’s accounts and transactions; Member Interaction Tracking which presents a current summary of all communications and interactions with the credit union; and Member Access which automatically ranks members based on financial metrics and determines their eligibility for products and rates.

Member Care Framework

To implement this framework, BECU needed a software platform that could bring together information from many disparate applications and present it in a unified manner. They selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM because it seemed lighter weight and more developer friendly and cost less than competitive alternatives. They also liked Microsoft’s roadmap for developing and evolving the product.

Member View was the first component they developed. Prior to Member View, when a credit union member walked into a branch or called on the phone, the member consultant or call center representative did not have an up-to-date, 360-degree view of that person’s transactional activity. They could get it, but it would take several minutes of cutting and pasting across multiple applications to assemble a complete picture because the transactions came from a variety of channels, such as online, phone, mobile and ATM. Like most medium-sized banks, BECU used commercially-available software and transactional data was spread across many applications supporting these channels. Member View brought all of that data together in a holistic view.

Member Interaction Tracking followed. It presented a similar holistic view of communications between members and the credit union. “If you have a conversation with us or you attempt to do something online or on the phone through our integrated voice response system, we know about the conversation and we also know where you dropped off attempting to do something. So when you reach a representative, that representative knows exactly where you abandoned the automated process,” said Leonardson. Therefore callers do not have to re-identify themselves or re-explain what they were attempting to do before switching to a live representative.

The third component, Member Access, made it easier to present each member with a customized set of products and rates. By leveraging business intelligence (BI) software to analyze financial metrics such as account balances, credit scores, and how long that person has been with the credit union, Member Access automatically determined a member’s eligibilities.

Proof Is in the Pudding

When the member care framework was complete, it presented a current summary of member transactions, interactions and relevant product eligibilities in a single view. Member consultants loved it because it made their jobs easier and streamlined interactions with members. BECU even won an IT award for the system. What about the credit union members themselves? While they do not interact directly with the system, they seem to like their experience with BECU. The credit union’s net promoter score, which measures how likely members are to recommend it to friends and family, is in the 75% range as compared to 25 to 35% for major banks, according to Leonardson. BECU also adds 7,000 to 8,000 new members per month. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

Toward One-Click Fulfillment

Yet BECU is not standing still. After using the system for 2 or 3 years, member consultants began to ask if they could also execute transactions directly within Member View. Now BECU is layering a portal on top its transactional applications and integrating them with Member View. “It solves the problem that most branches and call centers worldwide have, which is whatever you want me to do, Mr. Customer, I need to go into that application to get it done. Car loans, mortgages, Visa cards are all different systems. Now this portal will homogenize everything and make it all look like one environment,” said Leonardson.

Ultimately BECU’s wants to achieve what they call “one-click fulfillment.” This refers to an end-to-end digital enterprise that eliminates the need for written forms and signatures. The goal is to minimize process and maximize engage­ment with credit union members.

We think what we do as leaders is more than lead functions. We lead hearts and minds.”
– Butch Leonardson

Hearts and Minds

Leonardson considers the journey of developing this member care framework to be a tangible aspect of his greater concern as CIO for the IT organization’s shared values and morale: “Do I have seventy five people who wake up in the morning and say, ‘Wow, I have a great gig.’ I think a vast majority of people have a desire to be valued, to be in the middle of something important. And if you can provide that authentically, you are going to have a great organization. That is the center of my gravity as a leader.”

“Somebody called me a unicorn CIO because the stuff I think about is so different from most CIOs. If you looked at the org chart for our IT organization, it would look very normal. We have two VPs and seven managers. There is nothing unique about the way we are organized. We think what we do as leaders is more than lead functions. We lead hearts and minds,” he said.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

St. Luke’s Radiology Group Accelerates Reporting with Speech Recognition Technology

As the IT group, you can do a good job with the technology, but it is the cultural change, the enthusiastic adoption by doctors and staff, that really makes it a success.“
– Adrienne Edens, Chief Information Officer, St. Luke’s Health System

Toward Timely Transcription

As part of a new consolidated PACS installation for archiving digital images, St. Luke’s Health System wanted to implement a speech recognition technology for its radiology group to accelerate reporting and facilitate more responsive patient care. At the time, the turnaround time for manually transcribing a radiologist’s dictation averaged seven hours. Patients had to wait that much longer for the results of an x-ray or other medical image. “The goal of speech recognition was to eliminate transcription and shorten this process,” said Adrienne Edens, Chief Information Officer for St. Luke’s.

St. Luke’s Health System is an Idaho-based, not-for-profit health care provider for southern and central Idaho, northern Nevada and eastern Oregon. It operates medical centers in Boise, Meridian, Magic Valley, McCall and Wood River as well as more than 70 clinics. St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center is Idaho’s largest hospital, and St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital is the only children’s hospital in the state.

St. Luke’s medical imaging process involved several steps. When a physician ordered a medical image, a technician performed the scan and sent the image to a radiologist for diagnosis. The radiologist dictated an audio report that was forwarded to the transcriptionists. After the text version came back, the radiologist approved it and the official report and diagnosis went to the referring physician and became part of the patient’s medical record.

Manual transcription was the most time-consuming step. If automated speech recognition could mitigate or even eliminate the need for it, the overall time to deliver a diagnosis could be reduced dramatically.

Speech Recognition Development

Speech recognition technology has been in development for decades. Programming a computer to recognize and decipher human speech is particularly complex and challenging. While the accuracy rate has improved over time, progress has been slow and incremental. Today, the technology has advanced to a point where it is a viable for certain applications. “Even in the last couple of years the technology has come a long way,” said Dan Talley, IT Service Team Leader for St. Luke’s.

Collaborative Approach

St. Luke’s took a collaborative approach for reviewing options and approving a speech recognition system. All stakeholders had a seat at the table: the IT group who would manage it, the hospital administrators who oversaw budgeting and compliance, and the radiologists who would ultimately use the system as part of their jobs. They also enlisted Santa Rosa Consulting, an IT and management consulting firm for the healthcare industry, to provide guidance and expertise in this area.

From the beginning, the radiologists were active proponents of a speech recognition system. “It was not administration saying we needed the system, or even IT. The radiologists were the most enthusiastic advocates,” said Edens.

RadWhere from Nuance Healthcare

After considering several speech recognition solutions, the project team chose RadWhere from Nuance Healthcare. RadWhere is a speech recognition solution with reporting and workflow management designed specifically for radiology. The software transcribes a radiologist’s dictation in real-time, thereby speeding up report writing. It includes templates and macros based on procedure codes for structuring the reports. RadWhere’s workflow engine also automatically routes documents through the creation, review and delivery process.

To roll out the system, the IT group installed software on the radiologists’ workstations and the primary RadWhere application on a host server that is replicated to a remote site for disaster recovery. If a failure occurs at the local site, the system will fail over and continue to provide service to the radiology group. Furthermore, each user had to “train” the system to understand his or her voice by speaking scripts into the computer.

The radiologists were quick to incorporate the new system into their routine. “Normally these types of projects are phased in slowly, but in this case, radiology no longer needed transcriptionists after only two weeks,” said Talley.

It felt great to experience such an improvement, especially after being a part of this project.“
– Dan Talley, IT Service Team Leader, St. Luke’s Health System

More Responsive Patient Care For Less

As a result of the fast adoption, the benefits to St. Luke’s and its patients accrued quickly. The average turnaround time for radiology reports dropped from 7 hours to about 30 minutes. St. Luke’s is saving $450,000 per year in radiology transcription costs for the Treasure Valley alone (Boise, Meridian and surrounding areas). Most significantly, patients receive faster and more responsive care.

Talley gave a personal example. His elderly mother had fallen down occasionally in the past, and Talley would take her to the hospital for an x-ray. Typically they had to wait hours for the results, but the last time this happened, after the speech recognition system was in place, the x-ray and diagnosis came back in only 20 minutes. “It felt great to experience such an improvement, especially after being a part of this project,” he said.

Edens added, “We are thrilled and wish all of our IT projects went this well. We give the radiologists credit for the success. As the IT group, you can do a good job with the technology, but it is the cultural change, the enthusiastic adoption by doctors and staff, that really makes it a success.”

Based on the success of the RadWhere system, St. Luke’s is looking at standardizing on Nuance technology for all of its medical speech recognition applications.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.