Agcredit

AgCredit Case Analysis

Company Background

AgCredit, the MidWest Agriculture Credit Loan Company, is a midsized financial institution that focuses on agribusiness. Over the past few years, AgCredit has grown significantly and has been able to compete against much larger banks because of its extensive customer knowledge. However, with this growth AgCredit has experienced significant growing pains. CEO Jim Finney recognized that his people and processes were taxed to the hilt and that the company had to get better technology to support the bank’s staff. At a meeting with his executive team three months ago, the problems with IT were discussed. These problems included project delays, bad information, customer complaints and the discussions that IT did not understand the bank’s business. All members of the executive management team agreed there had to be better systems integration, yet none of them knew where to start. Kate Longair, an up-and-coming banking executive was given the mandate to form a team and figure out the best approach to achieve systems integration.

After three months of non-stop work performed by Kate and her team, she revealed a twenty-foot-long diagram of all the processes and systems in the company and how they connected. After discussing the problems with the processes and systems, Finney acknowledged that in order for the bank to meet its key strategic drivers, which included continuous growth, expanded customer relationships, the ability to spend more time with the customer, the ability to cross-sell between business divisions, and the ability to provide a consistent customer experience across all delivery channels, the situation had to get under control. Kate’s goal was to implement an Enterprise Integration Program (EIP) for AgCredit. To assist in this process, Finney appointed SVP Paul Manley as the bank’s CIO.

Problems with AgCredit

Several problems were revealed throughout this process. Through Kate’s initial...