Assiniboine Credit Union

When Assiniboine Credit Union (ACU) merged with two other credit unions, it quickly built a bare-bones intranet. But employees couldn’t locate files, key documents became out-of-date and the intranet became stagnant. Everyone, including the executive management team, knew ACU needed a new intranet.

“The old intranet was a file repository, not a functional website. The search engine wasn’t even able to index documents,” said Lawrence Peters, ACU’s Intranet Manager.

In a company survey, only 14% said they could easily find documents they’d never accessed before on the intranet.

ACU set out to design a new intranet for their credit union that would boost employee satisfaction and collaboration, and improve member service through better information access and sharing.

Assiniboine Credit Union chose ThoughtFarmer as their intranet partner

Peters began researching more than 50 intranet platforms and companies.

“We needed a collaborative, user-friendly intranet that could handle the 3.8 million words of documentation stuck in files. It would also need to help us meet our member service goals,” said Peters. “The right mix of functionality and collaboration was key.”

Peters narrowed down vendors based on criteria like implementation speed and small business fit. ThoughtFarmer was a match.

“We deal with a lot of IT companies. ThoughtFarmer is by far the best experience I’ve ever had,” said Duane Nicol, Marketing and Communications Manager at ACU.

How ThoughtFarmer guided Assiniboine Credit Union in building their new intranet, Mosaic

“ThoughtFarmer understood our situation better than any other,” said Duane Nicol, Marketing and Communications Manager at ACU. “ThoughtFarmer wasn’t just flipping a switch, they educated us on capacity building and collaborative culture.”

“Other vendors are sales people, ThoughtFarmer is an intranet aficionado,” pointed out Duane Nicol, Marketing and Communications Manager at ACU.

The result was Mosaic, ACU’s new, ThoughtFarmer-powered, social intranet.

Frontline and back-office employees use the intranet to answer financial inquiries, access procedural and legal documents, create and share information, and to check in with fellow staff.

The intranet is now at the heart of ACU with 93% percent of employees logging on to Mosaic at least once a day. 73% use the intranet every hour.

Peters and Nicol say the intranet’s success is due to extensive research—they investigated the needs and behavior of 85 employees—and to ThoughtFarmer’s methodology and platform.

Mosaic encouraged improved collaboration

The new intranet promotes behavior change at ACU, too. For example, before ThoughtFarmer it was impossible to know who authored a document, so when employees spotted content errors they often ignored them.

“On the old system, no one was empowered to make corrections. Now, anyone can leave a comment on any page, so there’s a lot more ownership and commitment to content,” said Peters.

Because everyone has a personal profile, employees connect with one another more easily, which Nicol says is great for cross-departmental team building and collaboration.

Assiniboine Credit Union’s real results with ThoughtFarmer

Remember the scant 14% of employees who could find what they were looking for on the old intranet? Now, 70% of staff have no problems searching for and finding information they had not accessed before.

How does this shake out in the real world? Two weeks after launch, an alert about counterfeit checks was circulated on the intranet’s home page. The entire organization was immediately briefed and both members and ACU avoided losses from the scam.

With ThoughtFarmer’s help, ACU made a transformational shift from an antiquated, centrally-managed collection of files to an interactive, searchable, and trusted platform for better communication and knowledge sharing.

Learn more about how a ThoughtFarmer intranet can help your credit union connect, communicate, and thrive.