WABASH, Ind. — Open Solutions' client CUs are sharing successes and solving problems with their peers at a new, private social network, believed to be the industry's first client community portal.
"Instead of only relying on monthly conference calls or e-mail, Open Solutions user groups now have one, common place where we can all go to post questions or read each other's experiences related to different areas of business, such as loans, collections, compliance, IT or deposits," said Kathy Houghtalen, project manager at Beacon CU here. "The portal extends our employees' reach to employees at other organizations experiencing the same issues, increasing our chances for collaboration and success."
The $880-million CU is one of more than 300 Open Solutions clients that are interacting in real-time at the Open Solutions Client Association Portal, which was developed in partnership with Passageways, the West Lafayette, Ind.-based portal solutions provider. The portal is funded by clients, Open Solutions said.
The portal user base continues to expand, and could eventually include the entire client base of 5200, added Dennis Madson, VP-client care, Open Solutions. "The portal is a pervasive, powerful, person-to-person network in which clients can virtually gather to quickly share best practices."
The portal is the first of a string of client community portals that Passageways has under wraps for the CU industry, suggested Paroon Chadha, Passageways co-founder and VP. "This type of portal allows clients to capture the tribal wisdom for easy reference by other clients and the vendor as well. This wisdom can then be morphed into more structured product enhancements and best practices."
Think of the portal as a blend of various social media, including focus group discussion boards; Twitter-like status updates by users; document sharing; people and organization profiles; blogs; and a "Wall," a la Facebook, said Curtis Fulk, supervisor, business support, Open Solutions. Click on any user's name to directly email that user from the portal, or search the community and content using multiple criteria.
Typically, CUs collaborate with e-mail lists, private e-mails, public social networking, telephone and user conferences. But those communication channels inherently prevent mass problem-solving and are not systematic, Houghtalen continued.
"We had a LISTSERV that became an e-mail nightmare," she said. "Each time one person asked a question, it was e-mailed to hundreds of other clients. Sometimes the e-mail chain would get broken, and you'd start all over again. In my leadership role, I became a technical librarian, sorting the messages."
Open Solutions employees also take part in portal conversations. "Case avoidance is one of our goals," said Madson. "If we can better enable clients through a community knowledge base to be more self-sufficient and utilize our systems to their greatest capacity, it will reduce our case inflow. We also get a pulse on the client base at a very deep level as we hear from the real movers and shakers using our systems."
"And it's really hard to keep the pulse on community without having the community in one place," added Chadha.
Emily Randolph of Richfield Bloomington CU in Richfield, Minn., leads a portal group focused on e-Commerce Banker (eCB), Open Solutions' Internet banking and cash management platform. By subscribing to other users' portal posts, each member of the community is more aware of eCB features and can quickly learn from other users' problems, said the e-commerce systems analyst at the $223-million CU. "One user wasn't even aware of eCB's check stop-payment option until she joined the portal," Randolph said. The portal has been particularly helpful as clients migrated en masse during the past few months to a core system upgrade, said Houghtalen. "Those of us who went early posted all of our tips and tricks on the portal."
