VERNON HILLS, Ill.-Credit union systems aren't sufficiently "open," suggested members of the CUNA Technology Council (CTC) Executive Committee during a Credit Union Journal "Look Ahead 2012" roundtable."
We spend entirely too much time getting our systems integrated to deliver that seamless experience to members," said Jeff Johnson, SVP-IT at $1.5-billion BCU. "This point cries out for industry standards," which the CTC is attempting to address with its "CUFX" standards initiative, he added.
The lack of open systems may hamper mobile deployments this year. "Mobile will be scattered among several different platforms for the foreseeable future, so it is important that credit union systems can be integrated with all of these platforms," said John Best, Committee member."
It's time we adopt industry-wide standards to end the costly and time-consuming combination of disparate systems and services from multiple vendors," said Robert Reh, committee member.
Vendor consolidation may complicate the open-systems dilemma. "Smaller vendors are being merged with bigger vendors, so our options are becoming limited," said Jennifer Weiss, Committee member. "Instead of dealing with a small vendor who specializes in meeting credit union needs, we find ourselves dealing with the 50,000-pound gorilla. This drives up the cost of services and reduces the flexibility we have in choosing best-of-breed technologies."
