Coveo

Today’s credit union is awash in data that can take the form of text, HTML, dynamically created content, meta-data, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets, to name a few. This information is the lifeblood of the credit union, but if it is not readily accessible then staff efficiency suffers. Just as consumers rely on search engines to find information, credit union employees need powerful – and secure – search engine technology on their desktops. One forward thinking credit union, Ohio-based Telhio Credit Union, recognized this fact a few years ago and turned to a solution that delivers secure, unified search across all documents and multi-media files: Coveo Enterprise Search (CES).

Dave Ault, Vice President of Information Systems at Telhio Credit Union, recalls that “we needed a way to access our IS policies and procedures quickly and easily. After doing some research on the Internet, I found Coveo and their free trial offer.” Ault was pleased to discover that “the installation was very simple and we really liked the clean interface.” Ault and his team of five IS employees used the system on a daily basis to retrieve documents that they needed to support the over 100 employees at the credit union. According to Ault, “it is a great tool for doing research.”

Realizing that Coveo Enterprise Search would also be of assistance to other departments besides IS at the credit union, Ault added a line item in his budget for the affordable complete package. Once the entire credit union went live with Coveo Enterprise Search, employees were stunned to learn of the extent of their document library: it wasn’t 10,000 or 20,000 documents, but closer to 500,000 documents! Fortunately, Coveo Enterprise Search scales easily and could readily handle their indexing capabilities. 

When it was time to go live, the IS Department simply added a link to the home page of their intranet and the staff was off and running with no training whatsoever. Ault explains that “our employees were familiar with search engines and CES is so easy to use that there was no learning curve.” He adds that “our staff really like using CES and it saves us countless hours in finding and recreating information.” Not only is Coveo fast and accurate, but it also delivers document summarization capabilities that allow them to view a 50-100 word document summary without even opening the document.

While the credit union considered other search packages, including the Google appliance, it was clear from the start that their security levels were inadequate for use by any financial institution. “We liked the fact that we did not have to add users to CES, and that it provides two layers of security: index containers and our existing Active Directory structure,” explains Ault. When an employee logs into their computer, their security credentials are used in a search to show all results to which they have access. This made for a really quick and secure implementation, and assured that, for example, the Accounting Department could not view Human Resource Department files, and vice versa.

In terms of customer service and technical support, Ault confides that “we haven’t had to contact them very much, but when we do they are fast to respond with knowledgeable help.” The upgrade to the latest version of Coveo Enterprise Search 4.0 went smoothly and Ault adds that “we really like the new features in 4.0, especially the filtering capabilities that allow us to filter by document type or author.” The credit union also appreciates the fact that CES does not alter their information formats in any way whatsoever like some knowledge-based systems. Ault points out that “we did not want a system that converted our files into a proprietary format that may some day become obsolete. CES has had virtually no impact on our internal operations.”

Coveo Enterprise Search has fulfilled all of Telhio Credit Union’s goals: simple installation and configuration for the IS Department; true out-of-the-box ease of use for employees; robust performance; high scalability; and secure access to all content. When asked what he would tell other credit unions about Coveo Enterprise Search, Ault replied that “try their fully functional trial offer like we did. I highly recommend it.”