Written: September 2025
Happy Standout September!
In this issue of The Gestalt Gathering, we’re continuing our celebration of the positive data stories in our lives that often take a backseat to the unforgettable times when things get busy. Again, we turn to our fearless team here at Gestalt to tell their tales of data in the hope to inspire your work and provide you with some of our strategies for data success.
It Can Be Done.
Here are two data success stories we think you’ll like. Names have been changed and/or omitted so the spotlight stays on the wins.
Dana’s Story
I was at a large finance company/bank, and the executive team was voting on strategic priorities for the year. Improving risk management was clearly voted by all as #1.
As the new CRO, hired to improve risk management, I explained to them that we couldn’t do it without data and added a new priority to the list around data. But after an hour of deliberation, establishing data and business intelligence was voted #7 in priority. Luckily the CEO, in the last minute of the half-day meeting, moved it up to#3.
Once the data environment was ready, and we added risk analytics and business intelligence people, everything just took off! Using prudent test-and-learn, champion-challenger practices our advanced analytics and new models grew our approval rate from the low 60s to 90%, while cutting the loss rate in half! Plus we grew the auto-decision rate to 90%, and ROA within 2 years skyrocketed by more than 200 bp, double that of our industry!
Of course, all of it took a few years as you don’t change credit policy overnight. But, it was the most impactful example of using data to drive business value we’d ever seen.
At that point, I tried to get strategic priority funding to grow our data environment even more. My (new) CEO asked, “What is the value of the data, in millions ?” I answered that it was hard to say. His response was, “Well, what portion of our increased volume, increased efficiency, and reduced losses could we ascribe to the (millions) spent on the data environment?” I said all of it.
Because without the data, none of it would have been possible.
We did get the funding and expanded the data environment to include 17 data sources. Then jump forward in time, as big data and AI became the new strategic priority we tried to promote. We were able to prove, that in the eight prior years (as told in the story above,) the investment in data, analytics, and technology returned a 9x multiple! So, our new data & AI initiative was quickly approved. And yes, we used AI…but that’s another story.
Long before Gestalt existed, we all had to build. There was no other choice. Ninety percent of people I talk to have had a failed project. I got to be part of one of the few successes. It helps and fuels me at Gestalt to make sure our customers all get successes, only faster and cheaper!
Carter’s Story
I started at a large auto OEM in its financial services arm. I was responsible for reporting/overseeing the loan/lease portfolio where I essentially reviewed prior months activity and reported it out to the organization. When I started my journey, this process took ~3-4 weeks and ended as the new month was ending.
Yes, that’s right – we were reporting out prior months activity at the end of the new month. So, I asked, “How can we do this differently?”
Instead of copying and pasting existing dashboards into a consolidated PowerPoint, I asked my team why we didn’t go directly to the data and curate from there.
Throughout the next few months, we (i.e. yours truly) coded and reduced, simplified, and streamlined everything. Our process went from upwards of 4 weeks to under 3 hours. This was in 2018. It’s now August of 2025, and the report is still in production and utilized by all of the organization.
Proper design, knowing your customer, and how to apply technology to a business problem enables both sides of the tool by helping answer business problems and building trust with the consumer.
Ready to write your own standout stories of data success? We know a team and platform that can help!