LAS VEGAS — While nine hopefuls entered, five credit unions with innovative, forward-looking technology solutions were recognized with awards here during the 2014 CUNA Technology Council and Operations, Sales and Service Council Conference earlier this week.
"What these credit unions accomplished might be useful to other credit unions in the industry and it's nice to share that information," Robert Reh, CIO at Nassau Financial Federal Credit Union and member on the CUNA Technology Council Executive Committee, said during the presentation.
Reh explained that these "best practice" winners were selected by committee vote. "We can't give everyone an award, it would be nice if we could," said Reh. "But we needed to pick winners."
The first winner was Consumers Credit Union and its "The New Branch Experience" featuring interactive video chats between employees and members regardless of branch location. Next up was San Antonio Federal Credit Union and its "Full Service Self-Service Kiosk," which improved members approach to product offerings despite machine only interface. Workers Credit Union won for its "Connections Project Management System," a collaborative employee online tool that tracks project progress across all departments.
A Wi-Fi Solution
Mountain America Credit Union won for its technology infrastructure, particularly "Member Wireless and Backup WAN Connectivity." The solution uses Wi-Fi to solve redundancy issues across branches and reduces costs related to connectivity downtime. As a result, the $3.6 billion credit union can provide Wi-Fi to all 76 locations, which serves employees and an approximate 450,000 members. This in turn has increased its mobile app adoption rates.
"We had a need for this solution," Information Systems Manager at Mountain America Credit Union, Lee Christiansen, told Credit Union Journal after accepting the award. "Employees at the branch show members our different mobile applications, and we needed to ensure they could facilitate."
Christiansen said that previously each branch location essentially had its own independent primary network server. "So when a server goes down, that whole branch is down. We needed a safety net."
With 40 employees in the IT department, Christiansen said he and four others in the network sub department designed the solution. "Our boss submitted an entry on our behalf, but we are really happy that we won."
The final winner was Service Credit Union and its "New Approach to Data Backups and Disaster Recovery Preparedness." The solution allowed all information, both physical and virtual, to be located on system. This significantly reduced backup and recovery times.
"Our five winners will participate in an online, one hour round table presentation sometime later this year [date to be determined]," Reh said after presenting the last award. "You will be able to ask them questions and see if what they did might fit into your credit union."
For more information on the winners, or to access 2015 applications, Reh noted that interested credit unions can visit:
