QAS saves MFCU over $100,000 in postage and printing costs

 648 KB

Mission Federal Credit Union (MFCU), a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative offering financial services to anyone who lives or works in San Diego County, has been in business for more than 40 years. Management recently realized that inaccurate addresses in the 133,000-member SQL server database were causing huge problems, such as high volumes of returned mail, re-work for employees, high postage costs, and ultimately, reduced member service.

"It was discovered that return mail was not being managed properly" said Pamela Acosta-Ocampo, Supervisor, Record Services. "We estimated that only 25% of our return mail was being managed, with 75% ending up in a general mail box which was shredded upon return. We needed a proactive solution to protect our members' information and to decrease our postage, operating expenses, and risk exposure."

MFCU was also experiencing significant loss in operating expenses. "It was getting quite costly because month to month we were mailing to bad addresses without proactive steps to rectify the problem," continued Acosta-Ocampo. "Spelling errors were a large portion of our problem."

Finally, MFCU was looking for ways to integrate process improvements for employees engaged in duplicate re-work. For example, the portion of bad addresses led to the reprinting of statements. "Reducing the labor and number of hours staff members were spending on re-work was a real priority," said Acosta-Ocampo. "My motto is quicker-faster-cheaper. We wanted these folks to be focused on other tasks."

QAS Pro address verification software instantly validates any address against the latest postal authority records. MFCU staffers can look up an address using the software, which then automatically enters the verified, complete and standardized address into their existing database application, all in around 12-15 keystrokes.

"The selling point for us was how easily QAS Pro integrated with Symitar - the core data processing system - and the functionality provided through the software program," said Acosta-Ocampo.

Installation and integration with MFCU's Symitar system took less than a day. "We were at lunch by 12:00 p.m.," said Ms. Acosta-Ocampo. Training was also simple and quick for MFCU's end users. "Our end users' jaws were dropping on how quickly information was appearing on the screen and how with the hit of the enter button, the information was pushed back," said Acosta-Ocampo.

"We are thrilled with the positive impact on productivity and efficiency we've seen. It has been a huge time saver all around." QAS Pro has helped MFCU's call center staff promote accuracy and save key strokes. In fact, prior to QAS Pro, the average key strokes required for an address change transaction was 35. With Pro, this number has been decreased to 15 or less.

MFCU is up and running with a clean database process in place for the first time in it's 40-year history. The organization has been able to reduce waste in mailing expenses, improve the efficiency of its operating systems, and mitigate fraud, risk, account takeovers, and identity theft. MFCU estimates they are saving $100,000 annually now that their database is clean and they are not paying for printing and postage to bad addresses. Even more importantly, QAS Pro will ensure that bad addresses stay out of the company database going forward.

More case studies | Request more information