Why Cybersecurity Should Be a Top Priority for Mid-market Businesses
Cybersecurity should be a top priority for mid-market organizations. With remote working at its highest, most businesses now hold some form of sensitive data in the cloud and workers access company data from remote locations. Zero trust security principles based upon a user’s credentials instead of a user’s location within a firewalled company facility are the new norm.
At the same time, the number of cybersecurity attacks has increased to its highest levels ever. It has been reported that ransomware attacks increased over 90% in 2021. Ransomware has hit new levels of sophistication, with demands for payment skyrocketing into the tens of millions. McKinsey reports that attacks are motivated by:
- Vulnerabilities posed by pandemic weary organizations and workers logging in from unsecured home networks
- Ever advancing connectivity driven by advancing digitization
- Threat actors are now “dwelling” undetected within victims’ environments (instead of using a smash and grab approach) to better understand where the highest value data and information lives and then selling that to the highest bidder
- More companies have been forced to pay ransoms to regain control of their networks and data, so hackers are further incentivized to innovate on this lucrative threat
Companies need to ensure they remain resilient by focusing on ransomware prevention, preparation, response, and recovery strategies. This is a journey—threats continue to evolve and staying ready means staying up to date with new threats of increasing sophistication, cyber security strategies, and best practices. Over time, increasing cyber maturity creates a resilient environment where attacks may still occur but do not have the same impact they would otherwise.
Mid-market businesses need expert skills in cloud security and data security, which is not standard in mid-market IT department skillsets. Keeping servers in a closet guarded by your IT department is extremely risky for data protection. With constantly looming cyber threats, organizations should make cybersecurity best practices a top business priority—and Aunalytics is here to help.
Aunalytics Vice President Ryan Wilson to Address How Community Banks Can Leverage Their Data to Gain a Competitive Edge at The ONE Conference
Leading Data Platform Provider Will Showcase Daybreak for Financial Services Solution at Illinois Bankers Conference
South Bend, IN (February 25, 2022) - Aunalytics, a leading data platform company delivering Insights-as-a-Service for enterprise businesses, announced today that its Vice President of Client Relationships, Ryan Wilson, will present at the Illinois Bankers' The ONE Conference to be held March 3-4, 2022 at the Embassy Suites in East Peoria. Wilson’s presentation, Using Advanced Data Analytics to Personalize Customer Intelligence and Achieve Competitive Advantage, will take place on March 3. Aunalytics will also feature DaybreakTM for Financial Services, its advanced data analytics solution for midmarket banks, at the Illinois conference.
Daybreak for Financial Services offers midsize banks and credit unions the ability to gain customer intelligence to grow their lifetime value, predict churn, determine which products to introduce to customers and when, based upon deep learning models that are informed by data. Built from the ground up, Daybreak for Financial Services is a cloud-native data platform that enables users to focus on critical business outcomes. The solution seamlessly integrates and cleanses data for accuracy, ensures data governance, and employs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) driven analytics to glean customer intelligence and timely actionable insights that drive strategic value.
With daily insights powered by the Aunalytics cloud-native data platform, industry intelligence, and smart features that enable a variety of analytics solutions for fast, easy access to credible data, financial services organizations should be able to take data-driven actions such as:
- Target the right customer at the right time
- Target market more efficiently to a subset of customers and prevent waste
- Target high value customers for continued growth
- Reach out to customers who are not using or getting the most value out of current purchases to prevent attrition
- Win business away from competitors to expand revenue
“It is increasingly difficult for financial organizations to leverage their data and gain customer intelligence that drives higher business value,” said Ryan Wilson, Vice President of Client Relationships, Aunalytics. “Midmarket banks and credit unions in particular aren’t in a position to ‘out tech’ their large national counterparts. Aunalytics provides the data platform and advanced analytics solutions they need, delivered in a side by side model that couples technology with talent and helps them achieve a competitive advantage.”
Tweet this: .@Aunalytics Vice President Ryan Wilson to Address How Community Banks Can Leverage Their Data to Gain a Competitive Edge at Illinois Bankers The ONE Conference #FinancialServices #Banks #CreditUniondirectors #Dataplatform #DataAnalytics #Dataintegration #Dataaccuracy #AdvancedAnalytics #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Masterdatamanagement #MDM #DataScientist #MachineLearning #ML #DigitalTransformation #FinancialServices
About Aunalytics
Aunalytics is a data platform company delivering answers for your business. Named a Digital Innovator by analyst firm Intellyx, and selected for the prestigious Inc. 5000 list, Aunalytics provides Insights-as-a-Service to answer enterprise and mid-sized companies’ most important IT and business questions. The Aunalytics® cloud-native data platform is built for universal data access, advanced analytics and AI while unifying disparate data silos into a single golden record of accurate, actionable business information. Its DaybreakTM industry intelligent data mart combined with the power of the Aunalytics data platform provides industry-specific data models with built-in queries and AI to ensure access to timely, accurate data and answers to critical business and IT questions. Through its side-by-side digital transformation model, Aunalytics provides on-demand scalable access to technology, data science, and AI experts to seamlessly transform customers’ businesses. To learn more contact us at +1 855-799-DATA or visit Aunalytics at https://www.aunalytics.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.
PR Contact:
Denise Nelson
The Ventana Group for Aunalytics
(925) 858-5198
dnelson@theventanagroup.com
Side-by-Side Client Success Model Empowers Bank's Analytics Initiative
Customers are increasingly demanding digital banking experiences, immediate results and responses to sales and service inquiries, and easy-to-use online platforms. While it is common for banks to invest in building mobile and online banking platforms, industry trailblazers are harnessing the power of data and analytics to drive revenue and smarten operations by gleaning better understanding of their customers for timely targeted cross selling opportunities, lower risk lending, and by cutting operational costs caused by ineffective duplicative customer outreach for sales and service.
So, where to start? The data analytics landscape has exploded over the past decade with an ever-growing list of products and services: literally thousands of tools exist to help business deploy and manage data lakes, ETL and ELT, machine learning, and business intelligence. With so many tools to piece together, how do business leaders find the best one or ones? How do you figure out the best combination of tools and use them to get business outcomes?
The truth is that many tools are built for data scientists, data engineers and other users with technical expertise. With most tools, if you do not have a data science department, your company is at risk of buying technologies that your team does not have the expertise to use and maintain. This turns digital transformation into a failed project without business outcomes instead of sparking data-driven revenue growth.
Yet most mid-sized financial institutions do not have teams of data scientists or data engineers and it does not make business sense to add these FTEs. Really, mid-market banking is stuck between a rock and a hard place in trying to compete with big banks and not get left in the dust of industry giants taking more market share by using data analytics to sweeten customer experiences. So how does the mid-market compete?
Side-by-Side Solution
A side-by-side client success model provides value that goes beyond most tools and platforms on the market by providing a data platform with built in data management and analytics, as well as access to human intelligence in data engineering, machine learning, and business analytics. While many companies offer tools, and many consulting firms can provide guidance in choosing and implementing the tools, integration of all the tools and expertise in one end-to-end solution built for non-technical business users is key for digital transformation success for mid-market businesses.
To learn how Aunalytics helps mid-market banks and credit unions achieve success in data analytics implementation and beyond through their side-by-side client success model, download the full case study here.
Communication Federal Credit Union Leverages Data to Drive Higher Business Value Using Aunalytics Daybreak for Financial Services
Aunalytics’ Advanced Data Analytics Platform, Coupled with a Dedicated Side by Side Model, Accelerates the Credit Union’s Member-centric Decision Making
South Bend, IN (February 22, 2022) - Aunalytics, a leading data platform company delivering Insights-as-a-Service for enterprise businesses, announced today that Communication Federal Credit Union (CFCU) is using Aunalytics Daybreak for Financial Services so that it can leverage its data to accomplish high effort projects at greater speed and efficiency. With Aunalytics’ advanced data analytics platform, in combination with the company’s side by side approach which integrates technology and expertise for non-business users, the credit union has accelerated its member-centric decision making to drive higher business value.
CFCU is a $1.7 billion full-service credit union with more than 200 employees and 23 branches in Oklahoma and Kansas. It serves more than 105,000 members and partners with many successful businesses such as OG&E, ONEOK, ONE Gas, AEP/PSO, Chaparral Energy, AT&T, Goodyear Tire, and more than 250 other groups.
Because of CFCU’s strong commitment to individualized service, the credit union uses a “hands on” approach when it comes to business intelligence and how it manages data. Ben Smith, Vice President Business Intelligence for CFCU, explains that “We work hard to get our hands dirty and figure out how we can execute our strategic goals, measure accordingly, and then quickly adjust our findings. At the same time, we take an ‘anything is possible’ approach, which posed a significant challenge back in the dark ages for credit unions and data analytics several years ago when we were all just getting started and trying to figure out how to do things with a slew of platforms, systems, and lots of data.”
Having data was never an issue for CFCU as the organization had always had volumes of information to work with. However, it was scattered across the organization and was messy, disjointed, and very difficult to bring together. As the credit union started to adopt analytics and become more data driven, it had to quickly learn how to leverage data within technology platforms to fulfill senior management’s requests for strategic information. Proving that it could deliver upon requests with the anything is possible approach, the business intelligence team began to receive an outpouring of requests, and found itself devoting a lot of time, effort, and determination to accommodate them.
Reaching a point when the existing model wasn’t sustainable, the team determined it needed a data analytics solution provider to support its business intelligence initiatives. After an unsuccessful experience with its first provider, CFCU established more concrete goals and a higher set of expectations for what it required of a data analytics provider. Innovation and a true partnership were at the top of its wish list. The business intelligence team spoke with many peers and industry experts before beginning the formal exploration process.
“We wanted to work with a leading-edge technology company that had a proven track record of innovation, along with experience across multiple industries, including financial services,” Smith said. “In addition, we were looking for a partnership that would go well beyond the traditional services model - a partner who would pull alongside us in a manner in which we push them towards excellence in the platform, and they push us toward excellence in our analytics and outputs from the platform. It really required a fresh approach to our preliminary discovery questions when meeting with different providers.”
CFCU narrowed its vendor selection down to two providers including Aunalytics. In addition to outscoring the other company, Aunalytics offered a side-by-side partnership model that integrated technology and expertise in one end-to-end solution built for non-technical business users. Aunalytics was also flexible, open, agile, and offered an unmatched level of support.
Implementing Aunalytics data platform and Daybreak® for Financial Services, CFCU realized immediate high value impact in centralized automated data cleansing, organizing, structuring, consolidating, and aggregating. The credit union was able to gain and leverage daily cleansed data, delivered seamlessly in a dynamic environment without the investment in required cloud infrastructure, software, and people such as data engineers, data scientists, and day to day support. CFCU now leverages this data to accomplish high effort projects at greater speed and efficiency.
Built from the ground up for credit unions and midsize community banks, Daybreak for Financial Services is a cloud-native data platform that enables users to focus on critical business outcomes. The solution seamlessly integrates and cleanses data for accuracy, and employs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) driven analytics to glean customer intelligence and timely actionable insights that drive strategic value. It includes transactional banking data that a financial institution creates and batches daily in the analytics, to provide the most up to date insights ready for business users to act upon when each business day begins.
“Our approach at the beginning of our data analytics journey was that anything was possible - with enough time, effort, and determination,” Smith said. “Our approach now with Aunalytics is that anything is quickly possible - with the right tools, innovation, and partnerships.”
“Communication Federal Credit Union had been struggling with what many financial institutions are challenged with - massive amounts of data that is typically siloed across the organization, making it difficult and time consuming to aggregate and integrate for higher business value,” said Ryan Wilson, vice president, Client Relationships at Aunalytics. “We’re pleased to work with them in a side by side manner that helps CFCU achieve its business goals while reducing and streamlining the manual processes required before implementing the Daybreak solution.”
Full case study here.
Tweet this: .@Aunalytics Communication Federal Credit Union Leverages Data to Drive Higher Business Value Using Aunalytics Daybreak for Financial Services #CreditUnion #Banking #FinancialServices #CommunityBank #Midmarket #Dataplatform #DataAnalytics #Dataintegration #Dataaccuracy #AdvancedAnalytics #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Masterdatamanagement #MDM #DataScientist #MachineLearning #ML #DigitalTransformation
About Aunalytics
Aunalytics is a data platform company delivering answers for your business. Named a Digital Innovator by analyst firm Intellyx, and selected for the prestigious Inc. 5000 list, Aunalytics provides Insights-as-a-Service to answer enterprise and mid-sized companies’ most important IT and business questions. The Aunalytics® cloud-native data platform is built for universal data access, advanced analytics and AI while unifying disparate data silos into a single golden record of accurate, actionable business information. Its DaybreakTM industry intelligent data mart combined with the power of the Aunalytics data platform provides industry-specific data models with built-in queries and AI to ensure access to timely, accurate data and answers to critical business and IT questions. Through its side-by-side digital transformation model, Aunalytics provides on-demand scalable access to technology, data science, and AI experts to seamlessly transform members’ businesses. To learn more contact us at +1 855-799-DATA or visit Aunalytics at https://www.aunalytics.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.
PR Contact:
Denise Nelson
The Ventana Group for Aunalytics
(925) 858-5198
dnelson@theventanagroup.com
Insurance Company Discovers Solution to Data Management Challenges with Aunsight Golden Record
A major global insurance company was creating a new customer-facing portal and needed a data management solution to deliver synchronization of data updates from the portal to its backend insurance policy and analytical systems. Customers would start using the web portal to update information, such as contact information, and the insurance company desired a solution to automatically communicate the data entries and changes to other company systems. The goal was for the most up to date customer data to be available for use in the line of business applications across the company and to ensure that data would remain consistent across ten separate systems for over two million customers cross the globe.
The insurance company initially selected a cloud-native data management solution provided by a company in Silicon Valley. They began a proof of concept project. However, the solution did not perform as planned. Despite being promoted as an out-of-the-box master data management solution, the product required users to write “glue code” to map and connect data sources to the platform. The insurance team soon realized that they would also be responsible for maintaining the glue code and connectors—the solution did not do this. They calculated that they would need to hire at least one more full time employee to do this work.
Further, the platform was built for a technical audience and was not intuitive to use. It required more training than originally thought. And because it was built for a highly technical audience, it limited who from the insurance company team would be skilled enough to use it. The technical skills required to use the platform meant that the burden would be on the IT department to fix data errors reported by business users, and respond to data query requests from the business, in addition to having to build and maintain connectors to data sources and govern and secure the data. This workflow would not be sustainable long-term.
Unsatisfied with the Silicon Valley solution, the global insurance company launched a second proof of concept project to try Aunsight™ Golden Record. Instead of merely integrating the data sources, the Aunsight Golden Record platform cleansed data, eliminated duplicate records, used ELT/ETL and other techniques to normalize data from the different data sources into a single automatically generated schema. To learn how Aunsight Golden Record resolved this company’s data management challenges, download the full insurance use case.
