CHARLESTON, W.V.-Credit unions want tools that make it easy to give members a consistent experience across every delivery channel-just one trend identified from the 25 CUs making wishes in Credit Union Journal's 10th Annual Technology Wish List.
120 Channels, 1 Station
Linda Bodie's holiday wish is a solution to the challenge of "How do we develop once and deploy into various platforms simultaneously?" The CEO at $26-million WV United FCU here wishes there were a way to produce the same content for the web, mobile, application and communication channels-and manage all the platforms from one dashboard. "The technologies and delivery channels are multiplying very quickly, so there needs to be a method to manage them more efficiently."
Heather Moshier, EVP-IT at $5.4-billion San Diego County CU in San Diego, agreed: "I would love a tool that translates features, functionality and service offerings across all delivery channels to ensure the member experience looks and performs the same across all channels. Then we'll have made banking easy for our members."
"We want an online solution that has a PFM application, account aggregation, rewards, check deposit and bill payment all bundled up-and extended to the mobile platform" to deliver a "seamless online presence," added Angelo Fanaras, CIO at $131-million Public Service CU in Romulus, Mich.
Member Mind Meld
"Our desire is to constantly understand and predict member needs based on their evolving behavior," said Christopher Saneda, SVP, CIO at the $2.2-billion Virginia CU in Richmond, Va. "The answer is in business analytics data."
North Shore CU, the $2.4-billion CU in North Vancouver, British Columbia, wishes for "interesting insights" as it enters the third phase of a business intelligence project, which will focus on member needs, said Fred Cook, CIO.
Better Decisions in a Dash
Mountain America Credit Union wants to deliver self-service analytics dashboards to management, according to Alex Barker, SVP, CIO at the $2.9-billion CU in in West Jordan, Utah. "We want to improve decision-making and profitability-and reduce demands on IT for reporting."
The $1.1-billion Numerica CU also wants to focus on data-business intelligence, data mining and analysis, said Chris Hyde, director of IT at the Spokane Valley, Wash.-based CU.
Better Budgeting For Members
Two CUs, AmeriChoice Federal and InTouch, would like to offer online financial management (OFM) tools to members. OFM would help members "understand where their money is spent and encourage members to use home banking as an alternative to branch visits," said Thomas Ha, VP-IT at the $165-million AmeriChoice in Mechanicsburg, Penn.
Linked to home banking and a person-to-person payments module, OFM will help InTouch "target market" to members who use it, added Diane Gerstner, EVP at the $836-million CU in Plano, Texas.
Mobile Tellers and MSRs
Imagine tellers and MSRs freeing themselves from their workstations so they can move around the branch with Apple iPads serving members, suggested Otto Radke, VP-IT, at the $95-million Oregon Employees FCU in Salem, Ore.
"My absolute pipedream is an end-to-end iPad application from our core vendor," Radke explained. "We greet members with an iPad in hand and provide insanely great experiences," including remote deposit capture using the iPad camera and electronic signatures right on the tablet.
4G 4 The CU
Charlotte Metro FCU wishes to use the 4G wireless network with quality-of-service rules and static Internet protocol addresses to create disaster recovery connections to all branches, said David Cooper, VP-information systems at the $250-million CU in Charlotte, N.C. "We want to ensure uptime of our branch locations, and most of our branches are within reach of several wireless towers"-whereas each branch ultimately relies on a single physical wire in the current configuration.
Network load is less of an issue with 4G today, and stronger security will be delivered using an internet protocol security (IPSec) virtual private network in addition to network encryption, Cooper added.
Just 1-Click
BECU hopes to move the focus from transactions to members, said Butch Leonardson, CIO at $9.5-billion BECU in Tukwila, Wash. The "1-Click Fulfillment" initiative will digitize and automate all transactions so staff has time to engage with members. "The end result will be a massive improvement in efficiency ratios and a much more engagement-centric operating model."
Standard Fare
Baxter CU in Vernon Hills, Ill., hopes the industry will adopt the CUFX technology standards proposed by the CUNA Technology Council (CTC), said Jeff Johnson, SVP, CIO at the $1.5-billion CU.
The first standard, developed for personal financial management (PFM) software, is currently undergoing a request for comments, said Johnson, who is also vice-chair of the CTC executive committee. Baxter wants to deploy PFM using CUFX next quarter, he said.
"CUFX would help credit unions implement enhancements to member services and introduce new systems and services at less cost to individual credit unions," agreed Robert Reh, CIO at $360-million Nassau Financial FCU in Westbury, N.Y., and member of the CTC executive committee.
The "Not-A-Converted-Office" Center
Tinker FCU hopes to deliver unparalleled system availability when it moves into a new data center-one that is being "engineered and designed as a true data center, not converted office areas, as are my primary and secondary data centers today," said Steve Mooney, VP-information services operations at the $2.6-billion CU in Oklahoma City, Okla.
The facility will be tornado-proof, water and moisture-proof and isolated from highways and flight paths and have underground telecommunications, he said.
LOS Re-do
Alliant wants to select a new loan origination system (LOS) and then completely rework the front end, according to Rudy Pereira, recently SVP-technology and operations at the $8-billion CU in Chicago, now CEO at Royal CU in Wisconsin.
"We want to control the member experience, so the use and feel will be designed and managed by Alliant," he explained. "We'll make it simple to apply for a loan and membership in the same session."
Virtual Realities
The $87-million Magnify CU in Mulberry, Fla., wishes to cut costs and power use by virtualizing servers and computers, said John Santarpia, president, CEO.
And by delivering employee software from a central server-virtually-instead of storing them on each employee's desktop, the $800-million Workers' CU in Fitchburg, Mass., hopes to spend less time managing individual workstations, said David Thibodeau, VP-IT. Desktops will be replaced with thin clients, which are more energy efficient and more secure, he said.
Come Together
Chad Graves said he wishes for "meaningful industry collaboration. Why reinvent the wheel again as individual credit unions?" CUs should "pool resources in areas that have significant impact to the bottom line and that are somewhat generic across the industry - such as payments," suggested the SVP-IT at the $3.3-billion Ent FCU in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Video Banking
The Family CU in Davenport, Iowa, wishes to let members interact with tellers via a video kiosk, said Kris Lundquist, VP-marketing at the $113-million CU. "For now, we'll likely install one of these sweet machines on land we own instead of building another branch." The kiosk will be housed in a smaller structure that resembles other branch designs, she said.
Telecommunications Love
Affinity Plus in St. Paul, Minn., is looking for a telecommunications "partner" to replace its current "vendor" said Keith Malbrue, COO at the $1.3-billion CU. "We need a partner that can offer plain, old-fashioned service to handle our rapid growth, call volumes and member-first management style."
And the $1-billion Empower FCU in Syracuse, N.Y., wants a "high performance, fully-featured" video conferencing system, said Rebecca LeBlanc, VP-IT and project management. "With branches spread throughout the state, training and meetings are challenging. Staff in branches doesn't have as good of an experience with the company."
Better Backups
Each server at ProMedica FCU in Toledo, Ohio, plays a different role-running the website, managing internal e-mails and so on. "I would love to see a way to backup all these different servers via one system," said Rick Haas, president, CEO at the $45-million CU. Currently, they're backed up independently-"it takes a fair amount of time."
E-mail From The Cloud
A cloud-based Microsoft Exchange server service would be less expensive than a local server-and eliminate the need for tape backups, said Vonda Burkhart, VP, CFO at $57-million Employees CU in Dallas. "We'll also get on-site, next-day service" when there are problems, she said.
Core Convert
Carolina Foothills FCU wishes for a smooth conversion to a new core system, said Bill Caldwell, third-party coordinator at the $75-million CU in Spartanburg, S.C. "I also hope everything goes well with our servers and printers-and that we get a state-of-the-art phone system."
