Financial industry insights have pointed to a common theme for digital transformation and sustainable credit union growth – unified operations. Financial institutions need to prioritize consistency across the organization by standardizing processes, eliminating silos, and ultimately working together toward a shared goal: an excellent member experience. This is what we strive to achieve at GreenHouse Agency through each client project. To demonstrate the impact of unifying operations, we’ll be sharing the experiences of three separate credit union clients.
The Advantages of Unified Operations
To start, let’s look at the impact unified operations have on financial institutions. To effectively deliver financial services, it’s important for departments and teams to be on the same page. When each team member follows the same onboarding and established procedures, there can be significantly greater internal efficiency. This includes using one centralized platform rather than multiple single-use tools, simplifying communications and workflows.
Another important element is data management. Unified operations means securely accessing data in one central location, leading to one source of truth and more powerful, actionable insights. As a result, credit unions can quickly pull the member data they need to make informed decisions and enhance credit union membership. Here’s how we accomplished this for three of our clients:
Leaders Credit Union
The Challenge
Our client, Leaders Credit Union, needed assistance upgrading from multiple systems that were difficult for their teams to use. At the time, they were using Marquis CallTrax for their CRM. Not only did this platform not feel user-friendly for their teams but they also lacked the ability to track web activities, application progress, and ad interactions.
Leaders was also using the Kentico CMS to manage their website, which felt outdated for their growing needs. Their goal was to switch to a more user-friendly platform while bringing their CRM and CMS platforms into one.
The Solution
As Leaders sought out alternatives, it became clear that HubSpot would be their best option. The platform is fast, easy, and unified, and they could have a CRM and CMS that work in tandem. This would greatly simplify operations for their teams, keeping marketing, sales, and service all in one platform, with one UI and one login.
By replacing Marquis CallTrax with HubSpot CRM, the sales team has access to a greater level of visibility into lead engagement and a rich history of interactions. With HubSpot CMS instead of Kentico, Leaders could combine CRM and CMS capabilities to power their website with member and prospect data, leveraging smart content personalization.
The Results
What changes did Leaders see after switching to HubSpot? One notable improvement was the simplified management of rates with HubSpot HubDB. Before using HubSpot, rates would need to be manually updated in every location. This required a great deal of effort when rates changed and held the risk of a missed location retaining an outdated rate. Now, rates can be updated in a single location, the HubDB table, and all locations across the website reflect those changes immediately.
Leaders was also able to improve their sales referral program once moved into HubSpot. To further automate the program, they were able to integrate with an incentive payout platform. This integration streamlined the process, making it more efficient to reward members.
Additionally, since the HubSpot CMS UI is tailored to marketers, Leaders marketing team was able to begin making edits themselves. This resulted in saved time and resources, as they didn’t need external help to make website updates.
Sound Credit Union
The Challenge
A common credit union issue is disconnected data, where there isn’t an efficient way to leverage banking core data in their CRM. This was the case for our client, Sound Credit Union. Without an integration with their core, they were limited to engaging only primary members with an email and limited segmenting capabilities.
Sound was also lacking effective tracking of their online account and product applications, making it difficult to quantify results of their paid digital and email marketing campaigns. Reports could be built based on emails that were associated with newly opened accounts and products, however, those reports were not in-flight. This rendered them ineffective for optimizing campaigns. The reports also couldn't attribute any returns to specific assets, making it a challenge to know which ad sets, emails or landing pages should be prioritized.
The Solution
To ensure Sound was able to leverage their core data, we implemented our Jack Henry Symitar and HubSpot integration to keep data flowing directly into their CRM. We created a custom HubSpot data model, so their teams could easily view and utilize the member data they need. Their portal was configured based on that data model with custom objects, associations and workflows. The client created import files for the data model’s new custom objects, and used an integration platform to import those files through HubSpot’s import API.
Through our advanced MeridianLink tracking, Sound could access actionable insights on their applications and see specific fields that a contact has completed. With this method, a tracking script identifies contacts and sends MeridianLink application progress custom events to HubSpot. These custom events are then used to create and update deal records.
For application deals that do not move to the “Submitted” deal stage in an indicated timeframe, there is a nurture workflow designed to reengage applicants. Those that complete the nurture workflow without submitting their application are then moved to “Closed Lost” and marked as abandoned.
The Results
With their core data being accurately reflected in their HubSpot CRM, Sound is now able to represent their entire membership including deep insight into product relationships and specific product information. This more accurate representation powers more effective marketing automation and creates more opportunities for sales and service teams to leverage HubSpot as well.
With advanced MeridianLink tracking in place, Sound has the most up-to-date application available when they need it. The team can track abandonment rates on applications and reconnect with interested applicants while there are opportunities for revenue recapture. With a clear idea of how their marketing and sales activities are performing with applicants, they have the ability to continue optimizing their efforts and improving member experience.
Wellby Financial
The Challenge
Standardizing and adopting new processes across teams is an essential part of unifying operations, but can often be an obstacle for credit unions. Our client, Wellby Financial, was facing this challenge when their Vice President of Digital Optimization wanted to utilize HubSpot across the majority of their organization. They needed the platform set up to either mirror the processes their departments had grown accustomed to, or improve upon them.
Change – even when positive – will always be met with some level of employee pushback. That said, Wellby needed a strategic implementation plan to secure buy-in and ensure a successful adoption.
The Solution
To help Wellby navigate these changes, we onboarded 15+ departments into Sales and Service Hubs with a HubSpot certified trainer. Our phased-approach to the rollout involved conducting discovery calls with each department to uncover their current processes and create a plan to implement and build those out in HubSpot.
We trained the teams on how to use the platform, sharing use cases that showcase how HubSpot could provide solutions to current pain points to help foster a sense of excitement. Through data integrations to ensure a successful platform implementation with HubSpot, we ensured their operational and data management needs were met. Our team also helped optimize and standardize their processes to boost overall efficiency, and helped them establish strong performance monitoring.
Another key component of their success plan would be incorporating ongoing support and contextual training resources into their portal. To accomplish this, we introduced Supered as a way to document their processes in HubSpot and train new employees. We embedded cards containing training tools, meeting recordings, links, how-to’s in each proceeding training session.
The Results
Since we were onboarding such a large number of departments across multiple Hubs, we prioritized aligning everyone on the vision of the HubSpot rollout and gathering their thoughts during discovery. By demonstrating how their input influenced their portal setup, effective employee buy-in was secured. With the specific information about their HubSpot set up available within their portal through Supered, post-training adoption became much easier.
As a result, we began to see a significant increase in user engagement and overall satisfaction. We kept a close eye on active users in HubSpot to ensure behavioral goals were reached, which revealed monthly active users increased from one in January to more than 15 in September 2024. Through HubSpot’s Audit Log tool, we captured a clear idea of user activity and saw that actions were inline with our wanted behavior.
In addition, we were able to track how users were using their contextual training through Supered. Between January and September 2024, card utilization was at 93.3% and number of teammates helped 11, showing that the tool has proven to be a valuable resource for the team.
Kickstart Your Credit Union’s Success Story
As you can see, unifying operations is at the core of credit union growth. Our work with Leaders Credit Union, Sound Credit Union, and Wellby Financial showcases how streamlined processes and integrated platforms can drive better outcomes and member satisfaction. Ready to upgrade your credit union operations in 2025? Contact our team today.
February 6, 2025
