Headquartered in Independence, Virginia, Skyline National Bank serves communities across Southwest Virginia, the New River Valley, Western North Carolina and Piedmont, and Northeastern Tennessee. Committed to keeping hometown banking alive and well, Skyline delivers "always our best" through relationship banking and tailored solutions, providing clients with an exceptional banking experience. Deeply rooted in the communities they serve, Skyline upholds core values that resonate with their client base—smart, kind, young-at-heart, local, inspired, non-conforming, and energetic.
Why Teslar? Efficiency Without Sacrificing Culture
Skyline National Bank needed a technology partner that could enhance their operational efficiency without disrupting culture or overwhelming staff.
When Skyline first began looking at vendor partnerships, leadership conducted a thorough review of the bank’s processes and identified a need for a digital solution to streamline the flow of information from Point A to Point C more efficiently while upholding their high standards for quality. They evaluated factors like time, button clicks, and ease of access, and also considered employees’ comfort with the programs they were already accustomed to.
“We wanted a solution that wouldn’t overhaul our entire bank or disrupt our company culture. We also had no interest in fancy gadgets that created information overload,” said Anthony Edwards,
Senior Credit Risk Officer. “Teslar enhanced our efficiency without erasing years of company culture—it simply improved it.”
With Teslar’s configurable platform, Skyline was able to enhance efficiency “speed bumps” across departments without abandoning familiar systems like Wolters Kluwer, Credit Leader, and Fiserv Director. “Teslar connects our existing systems and processes, allowing us to efficiently and effectively speed up operations without losing the core programs we value.”
Through tailored solutions for in-house processes, Teslar has provided Skyline simple, efficient systems for loan and deposit operations. By making internal processes more efficient, Teslar enables Skyline to deliver an improved experience for their clients—something central to their community-focused mission. “The more efficient we are internally as an organization, the better experience our clients ultimately have,” Anthony noted.
Exceptions
Previously, Skyline tracked exceptions through their core and relied heavily on email communications to gather and clear exceptions. The process was paper-heavy, requiring scanning, filing, and repeated back-and-forth exchanges—what they referred to as an "endless cycle of email doom." Within a month, Teslar transformed this process, eliminating inefficiencies and creating a more seamless system.
“We have moved away from tracking exceptions on the core and using email approval chains. We now use Teslar as a live, dynamic exception tracking experience for our users. This has changed our process entirely for loans. But wait, there’s more! The branch managers made a push in 2023 and we moved all deposit exceptions to Teslar. Teslar is the Swiss Army knife of banking solutions.”
One sign of Teslar’s success? Skyline’s Loan Operations team once uploaded so many documents in a single day that they crashed their cold storage system. While this was a momentary challenge for IT, the Loan Operations team saw it as a testament to Teslar’s efficiency gains.
Workflows
The loan and deposit teams use workflows for “everything imaginable,” Anthony says. “The approval steps also assist us with FDICIA requirements and more.”
Before implementing Teslar, workflows were managed through email and paper trails, resulting in delays and inefficiencies. Teslar initially streamlined these processes on the loan side, and its impact was so significant that the solution soon expanded to the deposit side.
With Teslar’s success in these areas, Skyline is preparing to roll out enterprise-level forms in collaboration with an outside vendor to support additional departments, broadening the impact of Teslar’s automation across the organization.
Pipeline
Skyline implemented Teslar’s pipeline feature to replace their email and shared folder-based system for loan packaging and communication. Now, all loan packaging and checklist management is conducted within Teslar’s pipeline. “It has completely changed the way our loan operations team works and manages loan package review. We also save an incredible amount of time with Teslar’s ability to send those loan packages to Director Client.”
Expanding Adoption
With the customizable nature of the Teslar platform, the bank has received feedback from employees and auditors on the ability to implement change within minutes to workflows and process. The ability to easily resolve issues with a quick turnaround helped foster employee buy-in across the organization.
Over the years, other departments that weren’t initially using Teslar have explored ways they could use the platform to improve their own processes, inspired by the efficiency gains seen in loan and deposit operations.
The success of Teslar’s tools has created a ripple effect, driving more adoption across the bank.
Benefits
The team at Skyline views Teslar as the foundation for future success and growth. They have seen benefits like improved communication, efficiency, and a better ability to track compliance needs.
They also benefit from equipping their team with digital tools needed to complete tasks efficiently. A common question they receive about tech solutions is, “How many FTEs did you save?” For a growing bank like Skyline, this question doesn’t quite capture the full picture. “As a growing bank, that question feels obsolete.
We know we’ll need more human capital in operations as we grow the organization,” Anthony explains. While Teslar does reduce FTE needs, the more direct impact is time savings, positively influencing resource allocation and employee well-being.
“Ultimately, Teslar saves us the most valuable commodity of all: time. Teslar allows our highly skilled team members to apply their knowledge in their fields of specialty without tedious tasks to slow down efficiency. It has also given time back to other support roles to continue learning more about the bank’s operations and growing their own careers.”
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