26 Hoosier Banker June 2015 PSP SHOWCASE A Compelling Way to Communicate Complex Financial Data Human beings are visual creatures. Our eyes have two million working parts and are the vehicles for capturing 80 percent of all our memories, according to the Discovery Eye Foundation. What’s more, it is widely believed that 65 percent of us are “visual learners,” meaning we retain information better when we see it, rather than hear it. That reality has driven the meteoric rise of the infographic. For this reason, Deluxe Corp. provides Banker’s Dashboard, a tool that uses this concept when communicating important information about financial institutions to key stakeholders, such as board members and C-suitors. To make someone sit up and take notice of your numbers, try presenting the information in the format of a digital visual. A digital visual is a digital representation (on a device screen) of information presented in a graphic (visual) format that is highly appealing to humans’ unconscious, yet almost universal, preference for visual information. If your goal is to inspire greater understanding and retention of information in your audience, a digital visual can be far more effective than the traditional dumping of data into a spreadsheet that excites only the most cerebral “number nerds” among us. Deluxe’s Banker’s Dashboard work for a number of reasons, including our natural preference for visual information and the simplification of complex data. In fact people are accustomed to working with visuals in their personal lives ‒ e.g., that cool pie chart that shows your asset allocation every time you log into your retirement accounts online. Financial institutions can use digital graphics to communicate highly complex performance and forecasting information to a target audience of decision-makers, who are typically too time-pressed to delve deeply into voluminous printed reports and lengthy spreadsheets. Digital visuals allow you to quickly present information about trends, risks and opportunities in easily understood charts and graphs. Imagine the ways that digital visuals can simplify the dissemination of important information, such as replacing or supplementing board packages, streamlining weekly branch performance reports, and creating compelling forecasts. How do you turn all that data into pictures, without being a graphic artist? Banker’s Dashboard makes it easy to generate digital visuals for financial performance reporting and analysis. You no longer have to endure the tedium of downloading data from the core processor, crunching the numbers and creating a spreadsheet that few will read in depth … and fewer still will truly understand. About the Author Alan Jackson serves Deluxe Corp. as the product specialist for Banker’s Dashboard, a suite of performance management tools for community banks. Jackson joined Deluxe in 2011, prior to which he was chief financial officer of three community banks, two of which he started as de novo institutions. A certified public accountant, Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia Wesleyan College and a master’s degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The author can be reached at 651-490-8738, ext. 528738, email: Alan.Jackson@Deluxe.com. Deluxe Corp. is a Preferred Service Provider of the Indiana Bankers Association.
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