WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.-The country's current miserly ways aren't being adopted by many credit union technology managers, who still seem to have money to spare, according to participants in Credit Union Journal's 2009 Technology Wish List.
Of course, money won't make wishes come true for everyone-one-third of the 25 participating credit unions said they are "circling the wagons" and "belt-tightening" on technology, even though they still have major projects in the pipeline for 2009.
What do IT managers want most next year? Credit Union Journal posed that very question to 25 credit union executives as part of our seventh annual Technology Wish List. Many answered that remote channels will be glowing and virtual services growing:
Remote Channels
Build an Online Banking Platform: To "aggressively build out the online channel," Michigan First CU of Lathrup Village, Mich., is collaborating with Amplify FCU's Jwaala CUSO to create something unprecedented in homebanking, according to James Anderson, VP-electronic services at $485-million Michigan First. "This new application will provide functionality above and beyond what is in the market today," he suggested.
Mobile Banking: Cell phones are one of members' "most important possessions," said Kristen Perry, VP-finance and technology at $166-million University CU in Bangor, Maine. Mobile banking will be a "service that is eventually expected by members."
Meanwhile, Wescom CU will enhance SMS-text banking, according to John Best, CIO at the $3.5-billion CU in Pasadena, Calif.
Online Money Managers and Advisers: FORUM CU in Indiana hopes to deliver "more online tools for the membership to make sound financial decisions as well as more self-service touch points to expedite service," said Doug True, SVP-Technovation at the $1.1-billion CU. Online members should be able to renew certificates of deposit, or tag and categorize transactions, for example.
Online Switch Kits and Cross-Sales: Switch kits would make it convenient for members to open accounts online, whereas automated online cross-sales would help "highlight ways we might be able to save money for the member with reduced monthly payments" on loans, said Anne Shivers, president and CEO at $58-million Carolina Collegiate FCU in Columbia, SC.
Mobile Branch: CEO Jessica LaRocca said "we wish for a high-tech mobile branch or LandJet Mobile Office" to supplement her CU's single location. The $14-million Calcasieu Federal Employees CU of Lake Charles, La., could move the mobile branch around to different towns on a regular schedule-and also use it for disaster recovery, said LaRocca.
Email Marketing: Tootie Holmes wants to talk to people via email, especially in order to market membership and loans. "But I'm not quite sure how to go about getting their e-mail addresses, how much time would be needed to keep the addresses current and what disclosures are needed to be compliant," said the manager of $11.2-million IEC FCU in Springfield, Ill. "And I need it to be done on a shoestring budget."
5300 Call Report Magic
"If I could have anything at all, I'd like an automated system to complete the 5300 Call Report, the IRS 990 Tax form and things along that line," said Ray Ward, CEO at $34-million Kent County CU in Grand Rapids, Mich. "But they seem to change as soon as you complete one."
System Deployment
Adaptable Virtual Services: "I'm not inventing anything new, I'm simply leveraging existing technologies," explained Christopher Saneda, SVP and CIO at Virginia CU in Richmond.
Saneda would like to combine the strengths of software-as-a-service (SaaS), on-demand computing and cloud computing, he said. "We could dynamically interconnect applications and infrastructure regardless where they physically exist." That means the $1.7-billion CU could "seamlessly and rapidly" deploy applications or infrastructure whether they're in-house, hosted or distributed around the globe, he added. More services could be deployed with minimized support costs, he said.
"In essence, our infrastructure could be nothing more than a set of web services and integration tunnels that route and format data," said Saneda.
Virtual Desktops: Fairwinds CU of Orlando, Fla., wants to carry its success with server virtualization over to employee desktops, said Charlie Lai, EVP and CIO at the $1.8-billion CU. "This will save us a ton of money," said Lai. "We're on the cusp of hitting our next obsolescence cycle with desktop PCs. We are confident we can lower long-term costs by increasing the longevity of our existing PCs and ultimately by purchasing low-cost terminals with few moving parts that can break. Centralized desktop management will reduce administrative overhead and complexity. We have already demonstrated performance gains at pilot branches in excess of 300%."
Alan McHugh, manager, information technology at $190-million USPS FCU in Clinton, Md., agreed. Virtual desktops "would allow for tighter security measures by placing a firewall between (virtual) servers and my core servers with access rules," he added. "Furthermore, there would not be any data stored on any desktop or laptop that could easily be taken from the CU."
Desktop and System Deployment: "One great thing would be some way to better manage our images for our different systems and provision PCs along with applications," said Steve Ervolino, VP-information services and technical support at Dupaco Community Credit Union in Dubuque, Iowa. The $530-million CU wants to be able to "quickly replace a bad image or a PC that might have gone caput over the night hours," and make imaged-PCs available to users instantly, he said.
"We are playing with virtual desktops, which are very compelling, but we've run into issues with some of our peripherals," he added.
Electronic Documents, Workflow And Management
Document Management: "At the top of our Wish List is a complete document management solution that is simple to use and yet robust enough to streamline our many workflows," said Alex Barker, SVP and CIO at $2.8-billion Mountain America FCU in Salt Lake City. "We spend a lot of time and money pushing papers around the organization."
COLD Storage: The $100-million St. Paul FCU has acquired another CU with multiple locations and wants to archive existing documents onto optical disks for easy retrieval, said Christopher Petersen, information specialist at the Saint Paul, Minn.-based CU. "We really don't want to have to keep paper documents on site and transfer between locations," said Petersen. "We are still trying to determine how we are going to archive all future documents."
Security
Training: "I'm looking for interesting, innovative and pertinent security training for employees," said Bill Burrows, SVP and CIO at $777-million EECU in Fort Worth, Texas. Burrows saw a "home-grown video done by a credit union that presents a series of humorous but memorable skits. I have looked and looked to find a commercial source and have come up empty-handed."
Network Security: "Our only focus in 2009 will be on security," with the help of a managed security services provider, said Vonda Burkhart, VP and CFO at $47-million Employees CU in Dallas.
Correlation: Stephen Jones, CTO at $260-million Signal Financial FCU in Kensington, Md., wants a tool that will "really correlate logs, network events and data flows in a way that allows you to proactively defend your IT assets. Having a product that could look under the hood of your environment and allow you to define permitted data flows within your infrastructure would give you more granular control your data assets."
The $3.2-billion PSECU of Harrisburg, Penn., plans to implement a log management system, according to Rick Long, VP-IT.
Business Intelligence
Build a Team: "I would like to create a business intelligence department," said Kirk Letourneau, director, information services at $820-million SELCO Community CU, Eugene, Ore. "Currently, no single person or team is responsible for analyzing data in support of our key business decisions. And a host of disparate systems are being used. We've begun relating some of those datasets into a common warehousing platform, and the next step is to bring the disparate individuals currently responsible for data analysis into one cohesive unit. This would also allow us to have one place to ask complex questions of our data, resulting in one sanctioned answer."
Communications
Unified Communications: Dwayne Sneade wants "true, intuitive, easy to use, affordable, non-intimidating and secure" unified communications. The IT systems administrator at $120-million Fort Lee FCU in Prince George, Va., said "the biggest challenge facing any office is communications. I want a system that knows to send the message to an office PC, office phone, cell phone, IM client, e-mail, or other means without having to read and delete the same message on each vessel."
Piedmont CU in Danville, Va., wants speed, in the form of data and voice transmissions on optical fiber, according to Dan Veasey, director, marketing and member education at the $34-million CU. "Fiber would give a drastic performance boost to document storage and retrieval systems as well as branch communications."
Conversions, Conversions, Conversions
From the Core Out: Consumers CU of Oshtemo, Mich., will be the first CU to convert to the Phoenix System core platform offered by Harland Financial Solutions, according to Scott Sylvester, chief financial and technology officer at the $275-million CU. The core conversion will force the CU to convert other systems, too, including the loan origination systems and Internet and mobile banking, he said.
And Seattle-based BECU will implement Open Solutions' new DNA core solution, according to Butch Leonardson, SVP and CIO at the $9-billion CU.
