From Silos to Synergy: Gate City Bank's Data Culture Revolution

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If you drove through the state of North Dakota, almost 1 in every 3 households you pass would be a Gate City Bank customer. As the predominant financial institution in the region, Gate City Bank is a customer-centric powerhouse whose reputation extends far beyond state borders: they’re recognized as #3 in the US on Forbes’ 2024 List of World’s Best Banks.

As a customer-first organization, they needed a birds-eye view of customer data (and potential operational challenges) to continue scaling their impressive growth.

Fragmented data hindered storytelling

Gate City Bank faced limitations with their Oracle platform - slow ingestion and transformation hindered their ability to leverage data storytelling effectively from multiple different, complex sources.

• Data Integration and Flexibility: Their existing system wasn’t flexible enough to integrate new data sources, resulting in data silos and preventing a clear view of customer and operational data.
• System Performance: Processing such large volumes of data was time-consuming, often causing system slowdowns that hindered decision-making.
• Reporting and Consistency: The bank's reporting system was fragmented, with hundreds of reports offering varying levels of usability, leading to inconsistent numbers and making data-driven decision-making difficult.
• Accessibility and Usability: Data accessibility for decision-making was limited, with different departments maintaining their own data - often in spreadsheets - resulting in inconsistencies.

Rebuilding the data warehouse with Incorta

Gate City Bank turned to Incorta to rebuild their data warehouse and trailblaze their journey to a data-centric organization in three key phases.

1. Data Integration and Migration: All data from existing systems was moved to Incorta, creating a unified data platform that integrated data seamlessly from multiple complex sources: including Oracle systems, Excel, SharePoint, CSV files, APIs, and more.
2. System Re-architecture: The underlying data structure was re-architected to support future plans without disrupting business operations. This included creating new schemas while maintaining existing business views.
3. Implementing Incorta capabilities:

• Reporting and Dashboard Creation: With Incorta, they were able to create  consistent, high-level dashboards and reports for the executive team - replacing the fragmented reporting system for a unified view of data across the organization.
• Future-Ready Infrastructure: Incorta also better prepared future initiatives with live, operational data that supports advanced analytics and accurate decision-making.

Instant answers & usable data for the executive team

With newfound access to fresh, usable data, Gate City Bank was able to give the executive team answers they needed for data-backed decisions, faster than ever.

“The executive team is very excited about the quick answers that we're able to give to them. For example, our CFO might ask where the best location is to open a new branch. With Incorta, we can simply ask that question and get the answer we need in an instant. We’re able to assist in the leadership decision-making process faster than ever before - and as a BI practitioner, it’s very gratifying to see the executive team use this data.”

Access to usable, timely data not only encourages a data-centric culture at Gate City Bank, but unlocked that 360-view of the customer they set out to find. With Incorta, Gate City Bank now has:

• Improved System Performance: Integrating multiple, complex data sources became easy and reliable
• High-level dashboards and reports that improve the accuracy, consistency, and usability of data for executive decision-making.
• Expanded use of live data across the organization, creating a data-centric culture from executives to tellers
• Billions of rows quickly accessible for analysis, unlocking new heights for data storytelling

With a scalable and flexible new data infrastructure, complex data integration, consistent reporting, and increased data accessibility, Gate City Bank is positioned for future growth and continuing to offer unparalleled customer experience - to the top of the Forbes list and beyond.