SECU turns content governance into a foundation for scaling operational efficiency

Industry: Financial Services 
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina 
Organization size: 8,000+ employees 
Hyland solutions: Hyland OnBase 

As one of the largest credit unions in the United States continues to grow, State Employees’ Credit Union (SECU) is reimagining how enterprise content is governed, secured and delivered. By deploying Hyland OnBase™ as an enterprise-wide ECM solution, SECU supports over 1 billion documents, enables real-time, ADA-compliant access and maintains consistent governance practices — creating a foundation built for scale, compliance and efficiency. By modernizing its ECM ecosystem with a solution designed for performance and integration, SECU is positioned to support innovation while maintaining safety and soundness as business needs evolve.

10 years ago, SECU envisioned enterprise content management (ECM), governance and compliance expectations that would meet both enterprise growth and enhanced technical direction, while continuing to enable excellent member service. To reach this goal, SECU decided to replace its existing ECM system.

The ECM team was directed to identify opportunities for innovation in its content management ecosystem. Requirements included being able to provide a solution that could be integrated with third-party systems, provide modern technology and capabilities, and scale as needed. Further requirements included the need to provide a responsive user experience, streamline releases and support the delivery of content across multiple channels. SECU also sought to enhance accessibility and compliance beyond what the industry expected at the time.

SECU implemented an enterprise-wide OnBase deployment designed around an integration strategy and strong governance. The solution includes third-party enablement that provides integration infrastructure, enabling SECU to approach new capabilities with a design-first mindset. OnBase integrates easily with other enterprise applications, supporting real-time document ingestion and retrieval at scale.

To support accessibility goals, SECU leverages third-party transformation technology to create WCAG 2.1 documents delivered in near-real time. Integrated with OnBase, SECU’s custom process retrieves documents, executes the transformation and returns compliant documents to the requesting system. In parallel, SECU leverages governance and release management best practices into its platform configuration while minimizing custom code and providing content services through a cohesive ECM ecosystem.

SECU now manages more than 1 billion documents, ingests millions of new documents per month and supports enterprise content needs at scale. The ECM ecosystem supports SECU; helps meet governance and compliance needs for content storage, security, reconciliation and retention; and further enhances employees’ ability to deliver exceptional member service. SECU benefits from near-real-time document availability and improved system performance — including real-time query and retrieval through OnBase for a variety of content.

Accessibility improvements are delivered in practice, with documents transformed to an ADA-friendly WCAG 2.1 format at near-real-time speed. SECU also built an experienced ECM team that has supported dozens of major enterprise rollouts and upgrades and performed multiple ETL conversions.

Operationally, SECU’s consistent integration approach helps streamline releases, enforce quality and position OnBase to support ongoing innovation while meeting compliance needs.

SECU will continue maturing content management, reducing customization and expanding its integration ecosystem to support future content-driven initiatives. Priorities include minimizing custom code by leveraging additional OnBase tools, strengthening the integration profile and optimizing OnBase document structure in preparation for future opportunities in the content space — helping to ensure ECM best practices, automation and data integrity remain part of every new technology solution as the organization grows.