Saving cash by handling cash better was just the beginning forAmanda Hamm and Public Service Credit Union.

Hamm is the efficiency officer at the $1.3 billion Denver creditunion, a newly created job she assumed just a few years ago.Already, she’s saving PSCU about $350,000 a year, she said, and,with her colleagues and some souped-up reporting software, they’reshooting for more in 2012.

The software is the Monarch Pro enterprise reporting platformfrom Datawatch, an analytics solution provider the credit unionuses to translate and manage reports in multiple data formats. Itis also distributed to managers in ways they can then understandand use to improve internal processes and member service, accordingto PSCU.

One of the first ways they’ve done that is by improving cashhandling at the 133,000-member credit union’s network of 67 ATMsand 30 branches across the front range of the Rockies, Hammsaid.

Hamm has used the Monarch platform to create dashboards thatshowed the branch and ATM managers how much cash they were usingand when. It also allowed them to even get competitive with eachother about how much more efficiently they could handle thatordering and inventory process.

“It appealed to their competitive nature and now it’s almost funfor everyone to see how much more efficient we can be, instead ofeveryone basically just ordering cash whenever they thought theymight need it without any thresholds or time frames,” Hammsaid.

They also were able to take on in-house work that was outsourcedto cash vendors. That move has amounted to savings of about $55,000a year they were spending on ATM cash management and about $9,000 aweek more in savings from branch cash management, she pointedout.

Another area of measurable savings has been in indirect lending,Hamm said.

“We outsource our indirect lending to dealerships and get a slewof data from different sources that we have to consequently performdifferent reports on each day,” she said. “We were able to create amodel to automate many of those processes, including a massivejournal entry that had to be manually done.”

Now, that four-hour task takes about 15 minutes, which allowsthat department to leave empty a position that had become openthrough attrition.

About 30 of the credit union’s 350 employees use the Monarchsolution. The finance and accounting departments are a particularhot spot for “power users” who have helped PSCU save about 2,000hours of process time a year so far.

“Our accounting department began using the Datawatch Monarchplatform in early 2009 to improve the usability of our generalledger data. They experienced such great results that we decided toexpand the tool’s usage by educating and allowing other departmentsof the credit union to utilize it as well,” Hamm said.

That includes payment systems managers who deal with massive ACHand other electronic transaction reports.

Hamm noted that most senior staff, including branch managers,don’t actually use the software, just the reports generated fromthem. They do, however, let Hamm and the other Monarch users knowwhat reports they do need, and together they’ve collaborated onmore than 200 different models so far.

“They have sort of the perfect environment for our solutions,”said Michael Morrison, president/CEO of Datawatch in Chelmsford,Mass. “Our strength is taking existing reports – and we use theterm ‘report’ quite broadly – out of transaction and other systemsin a variety of formats and pulling the relevant data out of it andmaking it useful.”

That includes HTML, PDF, electronic data interface and otherwidely used and more obscure formats, and especially Excel, wherethe Monarch software has eliminated the need for staff to spendhours typing in information from the other sources.

Morrison said more than 550 credit unions are among hiscompany’s approximately 40,000 customers worldwide, noting that thefinancial services industry is a prime user of enterprise reportingplatforms.

“They have a lot of fairly challenging reports,” he said, thatcan take advantage of enterprise resource planning technology to“integrate static information that’s not been integrated, put it ina dynamic framework and then apply analytics that allow you tofilter, slice and dice it.”

That allows branch managers and senior executives alike to drilldeeper into the information, compare different elements of data andvisualize it in ways that make sense for them, Morrison said.

At PSCU, Hamm said she’s now involved in helping to train usergroups on the Monarch software, holding quarterly classes forbeginners and advanced users who can now create, analyze and act onverifiable data without spending untold time on customprogramming.

Going forward, Morrison said Web-based data formatting, analysisand delivery are increasingly in demand.

“In the old days, Excel and PDFs were sufficient,” he said.“Now, people want to go to the Web in a self-serveenvironment.”

Datawatch is expanding its delivery of that and Hamm said PSCUis interested.

“We’re looking to move to Web-based,” she said, “so the reportswe generate can be more easily communicated to all 30 of ourbranches.”

While PSCU’s senior management doesn’t use the tool itself, theydo receive the reports that are generated, Hamm noted.

“We’re always working to be able to tell them, ‘If you can seeit, we can do it.'"