ERWIN, Tenn. — Clinchfield FCU here has to shut down on a weekday every time its data processing vendor releases a critical upgrade.
"It's a big deal, even though we've only closed twice for upgrades in four years," said Allison Anderson, VP-marketing and network administration at the $60-million CU. "We have to notify the membership, get board approval and pay salaried employees to assist and test during the upgrade. Other credit unions are blown away when we tell them about this."
Clinchfield FCU pleaded with the vendor, a data processor that serves more than 150 CUs nationwide, said Anderson. "We told them we would work weekends or through the night, anything not to affect our membership." But Anderson said the vendor told her that off-hours were off-limits, due to the vendor's staffing limitations, she said.
Though credit union staff enjoys the system itself, Clinchfield FCU will be looking for a new core platform when the current contract is up, said Anderson. Of course, Clinchfield FCU isn't the only credit union whose core system can get in the way. The previous core system at Tulsa Postal and Community FCU (TPCFCU) in Tulsa, Okla., slowed down the $24-million CU on a daily basis, according to Mark Colley, president and CEO. "We fought a constant fight to do just the common tasks, such as member transactions and end-of-day processing," Colley explained. "The core was so cumbersome that there was little time to do anything else."
The system-also used by more than 300 CUs nationwide-required several of TPCFCU's 11 employees to work until midnight to complete end-of-month reports, Colley said. "Then we'd sit and wait for a backup to finish but would finally just go home and hope it worked."
Straightforward database queries weren't possible: the CU couldn't use its familiar Microsoft Office Access database management system to query the UNIX-based environment, he continued. "And getting help from the vendor was like pulling molars out of bears."
In 2004, TPCFCU converted to Cruise, Symitar's Windows-based, client/server core product for smaller CUs. "Cruise is easy to use," at a monthly cost that is two-thirds of that for the previous system, Colley said. TPCFCU can now write Access queries that help retain loans, for example, he said. "We can pull up all car loans that originated between 30 and 40 months ago, import that data into Microsoft Word to create a mailing list, and send a letter to see if the member might be interested in trading the vehicle."
As a result of the new capabilities, loans have increased 40% in the past five years, or about 1.5% in the past year, said Colley. "All the energy we spent wrestling around with the previous system can now be spent making loans. Cruise allows us to better handle and understand our data."
Loan growth was accompanied by an increase in ROA, net income, assets and membership, triggering a project to build a new headquarters, Colley said. Growth has been stifled in the past year by corporate stabilization payments, he added.
Scheduled processing and updates are fast, he said. Automated end-of-month processing can be completed in 15 minutes by one employee dialing-in from home, and month-end backups take an hour. System updates can be downloaded from the Web and installed to PCs in about 15 minutes before the CU opens in the morning, and Call Report fields can be completed instantly.
"If a new employee can handle Microsoft Excel, they can handle Cruise," said Colley. "The last person we hired took 15 minutes to get acclimated."
