Customer Stories
GESA Credit Union Improves Customer Data Capture Efficiency and Reduces Hardware Use Requirements with Dynamic Web TWAIN
Snapshot
Gesa Credit Union is based in Washington state and has around 700 employees serving more than 260,000 members worldwide. The credit union was using separate scanner devices for common data capture for the banking systems and their CRM application. To remove duplication of effort and improve productivity, a team was put together to consider technology to consolidate usage to a single scanner. To save on development time and costs, the team found and used Dynamsoft’s Dynamic Web TWAIN SDK. The SDK is designed to quickly facilitate usage of common TWAIN-based scanners within web applications. It can save many months of development time, and on related costs, to create such a solution in-house. In just a few weeks, GESA Credit Union was able to integrate the use of one scanner for the banking system and CRM application. This made the data capture process for customer service representatives more efficient. Removing the need for a second scanner also saved physical space around workstations and saved on the purchasing and support costs of second devices. The team now plans to expand use of the single-scanner application to other front and back office staff.
The Company
Gesa Credit Union was founded in 1953 and is headquartered in Richland, WA. The credit union has grown from a part-time office operating out of a small location to the second largest credit union in Washington state. Today, GESA Credit Union has around 700 employees serving more than 250,000 members worldwide. In 1996 Gesa Credit Union became a community-chartered credit union. This milestone opened its field of membership to everyone in Washington and the credit union experienced explosive growth. The credit union then also went through a merger with Inspirus Credit Union. This history, and with consumers embracing the value of banking with a not-for-profit cooperative, has propelled Gesa Credit Union to grow to 28 locations throughout the state.
700
employees
250,000
members worldwide
A Technology Need
As part of servicing customers, Gesa Credit Union employs Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management (CRM) application, which they have customized with a third-party vendor solution. A CRM is essentially software or an online application to help manage a business’s relationship with customers. The CRM might be used for recording recent interactions or transactions, for fostering current or future customer opportunities, and more.
Gesa Credit Union has approximately 300 CRM users. The CRM application is used by the credit union’s sales and servicing front line staff. GESA Credit Union was using two separate driver’s license scanners at two workstations. One workstation was specific to GESA Credit Union’s core banking system and the other was used with the CRM application. Each workstation captured essential customer data, such as their driver’s license information.
The issue was the CRM application and scanner did not support the workstation and scanner used for their core banking system. Nor did the banking system software and devices support the CRM application. This caused a lot of duplication of effort to scan and capture essential document information like driver’s license data, lowering productivity, and wasting time and resources.
A small team at the bank went looking for a solution. They needed something to allow the CRM application to be able to use the same scanner used for the core banking system. In this way, one scan instead of two would capture information and populate essential data into the CRM and core banking system at once.
Getting Going with a Solution
The development team at the credit union determined they needed to implement a software fix if they wanted the CRM application to be able to recognize and use the banking system scanner. In addition, they would need the captured information to integrate into their implementation of the Salesforce CRM.
The technical part of the team understood that developing code for scanner devices to communicate with applications would be time and resource taxing. It could take months to learn about relevant standards and then months more to code a solution, just to get to a point to test it.
As an alternative to building the functionality, they determined a software development kit (SDK) could be used to integrate the multiple scanning processes. In their search for a document scanning SDK, GESA Credit Union came across Dynamsoft and their Dynamic Web TWAIN SDK. After some additional research and a 30-day free trial of the SDK, the team knew they had found their solution. The Dynamsoft technical support team worked with the GESA Credit Union team and their development partner to assist with a successful deployment.
To implement the SDK solution, around eight team members from the credit union collaborated on the project. The implementation team included members from the following departments: i Digital Products, Development, Sales, Branch Management, and Call Center Management.
"Using Dynamsoft’s Dynamic Web TWAIN SDK to streamline our document scanning and customer data capture processes has made our representatives more efficient,” said Andrew Chung, VP of Development and Analytics for Gesa Credit Union. “We are also now saving physical space around the workstations by not having to use two separate scanner devices, which the SDK also helped make happen."
Immediate & Long-Team ROI
Before usage even began, branches were able to do away with extra hardware. Removing the second scanner saved space around each workstation. It also saved on costs by eliminating a need for a second scanner device. Furthermore, by consolidating use into a single scanner, customer service representatives became more efficient in customer processes like data capture.
The tighter integration with Salesforce has also been helpful in saving time by removing the need to enter data twice for separate applications. This is saving time during a typical day, and is also saving customer service reps time over the long haul too. The credit union plans to continue adding more users company-wide, eventually to all front and back office staff so everyone can benefit from the gained efficiencies.
About Dynamic Web TWAIN
Briefly, Dynamsoft’s Dynamic Web TWAIN is an enterprise-grade reliable browser-based document scanning SDK. It is specifically designed for web applications, and the company also offers an SDK for desktop applications. With just a few lines of JavaScript code, a developer can implement an application to scan documents via any common web browser. The SDK also has built-in support for image editing features like rotate, crop, mirror, contrast, brightness, and more. Users can export or upload various popular file formats and use common transfer protocols to save captures to local or network repositories.