FORT ATKINSON, Wis.—Many vendor relationships can offer more than meets the eye, and vendor partnerships can sometimes yield results greater than the sum of their respective parts.
Danielle Frawley knows that from personal experience. Her efforts as chief retail officer at $220 million Fort Community Credit Union here led to the creation of an innovative, integrated mobile application that has improved online services for a growing number of the credit union's 17,800 members.
"We didn't want to be one of those financial institutions that said, 'Hey, we're only $220 million in assets and we can't do innovative things,'" Frawley said. "We pushed our vendors to deliver what we believed our members wanted, and they came through for us."
What FCCU members wanted, it turned out, was a comprehensive transactional mobile app that combined a range of online services with the CU's existing Buzz Points retail program that rewards members for buying local. Frawley turned to Malauzai Software Inc. to pitch the idea.
"All of our great ideas come from credit unions, and they told us that they wanted to build the Buzz Points program into a mobile app," said Robb Gaynor, chief product officer for Malauzai. "We never build things unless our customers ask for them, and in this case we had an actual client to work for."
Both Malauzai and Buzz Points are both headquartered in Austin, Texas, which made the partnership geographically convenient. The two vendors came together and Malauzai built the Buzz Point specs into the front end of its mobile app software program, Gaynor explained. It was the first time the two companies worked together and the first time the retail rewards program capabilities appeared in a mobile app.
"We wanted to provide our members with a user-intuitive mobile app that worked with Apple, Android and other providers and was seamless for members to access," Frawley said. "My members don't want to download 10 apps so we wanted to give them one source to get all their credit union information."
The app allows FCCU members to conduct member-to-member money transfers, make loan payments, access credit card and loan balances and do remote deposit capture, among other services. Members can snap pictures of third-party checks from other institutions and use the image to make payments to the credit union, Frawley explained.
The Buzz Points integration allows members to earn credit from retail purchases at local vendors or make donations to local charities registered with the program, Frawley explained. It also is possible to redeem credits earned online while shopping.
The program, introduced in May, has already enjoyed rapid growth among FCCU's member base. The program had 3,539 initial downloads, a number that since program launch has risen to 4,359 users, a 122% increase in the first six months.
And maybe best of all, FCCU incurred no cost for the program's creation and implementation. As the first credit ubnion to use the combined software programs, FCCU operates as a sort of beta site for Malauzai, which has not charged the credit union for its services.
"It's an innovative idea that didn't take us a whole lot of time to create, and it was worth it," Gaynor said. "Now we're able to go to a lot of clients and sell this many, many times over. I was just happy to have had someone test us for us."
