Delivering an Unwavering Quality of Service

Velera, formerly PSCU/Co-op Solutions, is the United States’ premier payments credit union service organization and an integrated financial technology solutions provider. With over four decades of industry experience and a commitment to service excellence and innovation, the company serves more than 4,000 financial institutions throughout North America.

Velera places a high degree of value on people and culture. “Our success is very much contingent on taking care of our employees and credit union partners,” says Dorothy Patrick, Business Partner, Organizational Change Management. “It’s also essential for our organization to continually change to meet the ambitious goals of Velera and to grow as an industry leader.”

Leadership recognized that with Velera’s commitment to service excellence and continuous innovation, the company needed a structured, standardized approach for managing change. But most important, Velera places a high degree of value on people and culture, so minimizing the impact on employees from disruptive changes became a top priority.

Deploy an Organizational Change Management Infrastructure

Several years ago, with executive commitment to change management established, Patrick was chosen to help design, develop and deploy an Organizational Change Management (OCM) infrastructure. Building a change management practice required having a standard, proven change management methodology at its core. Velera turned to Prosci to support their cause. “Prosci is a respected industry leader in change management, and the ADKAR Model is simple and relatable,” says Patrick.

Develop the Organizational Change Management Practice

The main goals of OCM included deepening collaborative change management competencies within all business units, attaining greater sustainable project success, and supporting future growth. To develop the people, processes and tools necessary for a functioning OCM practice, Velera leveraged a variety of innovative strategies, industry best practices, and Prosci solutions. Notable components include:

• Cross-functional OCM team comprised of business partners
• Prosci change management practitioners
• Velera Enterprise OCM Resource Library
• Change Agent Network ambassadors
• Prosci Organizational Change Competency (OCC) License to help build change capabilities
• Prosci Train-the-Trainer credentials for delivering role-based training
• Close partnerships with Velera’s Transformation Office and Learning and Organizational Development teams

Build Change Capability With a Prosci License

Velera chose to leverage a Prosci OCC License to help build the OCM infrastructure and overall change capabilities. The license gives Velera access to a variety of Prosci training materials and tools, including the Prosci Methodology, which the OCM team has customized to meet their needs. They deliver the Prosci materials and other change management resources to practitioners, managers, employees and others from their extensive digital repository, the Velera Enterprise OCM Resource Library.

Using the license benefits and their Prosci Train-the-Trainer credentials, Patrick and others built change competencies, cost-effectively, in everyone from senior leaders to front-line employees. Delivering the practitioner program has been especially important to OCM’s mission. “Our internal Prosci Practitioner Program allows us to deepen the breadth, depth and scope of change competencies within the business units, which supports our growth path,” says Patrick.

Results

Moving the Organization Forward

The OCM team has evolved to where it can deliver on its key mission of improving project results in business areas such as fraud and risk, IT and finance, where deploying a new accounting system has become the largest change project to date. Another important accounting project, Timecard Management, has benefited from change management.

Migrate Time Tracking to ServiceNow

As part of an enterprise-wide transformation initiative, the organization decided to migrate time tracking to ServiceNow® Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Timecard Management. The Process Excellence team faced a challenging change project.

“At project launch, the amount of overall change saturation in the organization was high,” says Kathleen Cook, Manager, Process Excellence, and a Change Agent Network ambassador. “Additionally, the affected employee base is quite tenured and comfortable with the existing, and sometimes outdated, processes and procedures.” Hundreds of other employees will also be directly impacted by the project.

Fortunately, the entire Process Excellence team responsible for continuous improvement projects is certified in Prosci change management. “We’re disrupting people’s lives in the work we do,” says Cook. “Change management is necessary to support these individuals and to help our projects succeed.”

On the ServiceNow project, the team used Prosci Methodology tools such as the Change Impact Assessment to identify those impacted by the change, and the Prosci Change Triangle (PCT) Model to track progress throughout the project. Content and activities like Knowledge Base articles and Lunch and Learn events, which exceeded 80% in attendance, helped prepare users for the change. They also developed and leveraged user adoption metrics to monitor project outcomes, which revealed high adoption rates.

Overall, the Process Excellence team has succeeded in making this important digital transformation happen. The new standardized, holistic time tracking provides leadership data insights for improved decision-making, while the business benefits from process and cost efficiencies.

Elevate the Capacity for Change

Today, Velera has a solid enterprise change management foundation in place. Beyond providing direct project support, the OCM team also serves in a consultancy role to other teams to further extend capabilities. For instance, Patrick and others in OCM engage with workstream owners to assess project needs and advise them on the strategies, tools and resources that can help their projects succeed.

Patrick reflects on the importance of partnering with Prosci in developing their enterprise change capabilities. “Hands down, the difference has been the knowledgeable and supportive Prosci partners,” says Patrick. “I leaned into the Prosci team a lot over the past three years, especially around getting the most value as a Prosci License holder, and they are a considerable contributor to Velera’s change management success.”

Looking Ahead

By continuing to change and grow as an organization, Velera will continue to enable credit unions to securely grow and meet evolving consumer demands.

Says Patrick, “While organizational change is recognized as an essential for success, it can still be a difficult experience for impacted employees and clients. Managing changes effectively is imperative, and OCM is committed to keep evolving as an organic, growing resource to support our culture and bring value to the business as a whole.”