Whether your financial institution is embarking on the journey of finding a new core system or beginning to notice the signs of aging in your current one, a core conversion is an inevitable step for any forward-thinking FI. Embracing a core conversion, while presenting significant challenges, also opens doors to exciting opportunities. It is a pivotal move that ensures competitiveness, enhances member services, and positions your institution as a leader in the industry.
So, what is the key to a successful core conversion? In this article, we'll highlight the paramount importance of data integrity and quality in ensuring a seamless transition. We'll delve into why this aspect is crucial and offer insights into how partnering with the Lodestar Data Warehouse can pave the way for a smooth and successful core conversion.
Why Data Integrity Matters in a Core Conversion
Amidst the complexities and demands of a core conversion, safeguarding the integrity and enriching the quality of your data stands out as the foremost priority. While this may sound obvious, many financial institutions overlook the necessary steps to safeguard, validate, and seamlessly transition their data, leading to subpar outcomes that fall short of expectations, both for the institution and its members.
Rather than solely relying on the new core provider to handle the conversion process, it's essential to engage a data partner dedicated to ensuring the integrity, quality, validation, mapping, and migration of your data throughout the conversion journey. A data warehousing partner, like Lodestar, acts as a crucial intermediary between legacy and new core systems, optimizing operations, enhancing accuracy, and emerging as the hero of the core conversion process.
The Role of Data Warehousing in Core Conversion Success
Core conversions demand meticulous planning and execution to reap the rewards of improved efficiency, enhanced member service, and newfound avenues for growth and competitiveness. However, these objectives are only fully realized when data transcends its mere transfer from one platform to another and undergoes a transformative elevation during the process.
This elevation is made possible through collaboration with a data warehousing and analytics partner, such as Lodestar, which provides invaluable support throughout the core conversion journey. Financial institutions stand to gain numerous benefits, including:
Reporting Consistency: By leveraging a dedicated data warehouse partner, you can generate reports with consistent data points before, during, and after the conversion, ensuring continuity and reliability.
Process and Decision Analysis: Access to data cuts or slices at each phase enables thorough testing of decisions throughout the project, fostering informed choices and strategic adaptations.
Data Integrity Opportunities: Advanced tools like Data Quality Management identify exceptions during each data cut, facilitating legacy core cleanup and eliminating manual validation efforts.
Data Readiness: A proactive data warehouse partner can develop new reports to ensure your dashboard is primed for action on day one of the new core going live.
Andrea Brown, Lodestar's SVP of Growth, emphasizes the advantages: "With a data warehouse, you can compare cuts, automate report updates, and even proactively identify issues based on unique business requirements, streamlining validation processes."
Your journey through each data cut is smoother with the guidance of a dedicated data warehouse and analytics partner, refining code and streamlining processes to ensure readiness for the go-live moment. With Lodestar by your side, your institution can confidently embark on a core conversion journey that not only meets expectations but surpasses them, unlocking new horizons of success and innovation.
At Lodestar, we advise financial institutions to always be thinking about their use cases and the business outcomes they want to achieve through their core conversion. This prevents them from being too narrow in scope and not bringing in enough data, or on the flip side being too broad in scope and then bringing in tons of data sources that they don’t know how to leverage. Starting with your pain points, challenges, and opportunities helps financial institutions ensure they have the right data when they need it.
Partnering with a data warehouse expert can help your core conversion run more smoothly, deliver more robust results and position your financial institution to be ready to shine on day one. Plus, when you complete a core conversion with Lodestar as your data warehouse, your financial institution will also have a great data tool when your conversion is complete.
Lodestar is proud to partner with clients during core conversions, guiding financial institutions on best practices for data throughout the practice. Connect with us today.
Until next time, happy analyzing!