CU Journal Profiles Ohio Credit Union Core Conversion to FLEX
Serving the financial needs of the employees and affiliates of the ProMedica Health System headquartered in Toledo, OH, ProMedica Federal Credit union received national industry attention in a recent Credit Union Journal Article entitled, “Why One Small CU Traded in Basic Core System”.
In an interview by the Journal's Technology Correspondent, Kevin Jepson, ProMedica FCU President Rick Haas responded to questions outlining the credit union's need to improve its technology in face of a struggling economy. "Other core systems offer you piecemeal third-party products and try to make them work with the core system . . . It's much more advantageous if the features are developed from the inside out. The system operates better; you have fewer interface problems. Plus, if there are issues, you only have to deal with one firm and one product instead of several."
Mr. Haas continued, "FLEX has opened up new technology for us," he said. "We're the first CU in Toledo to offer mobile banking to our members." Members have adopted mobile banking at an impressive rate-about 10% of online banking members have gone mobile in the first three months of launch, and most are in their teens and twenties. The biggest value with CMC is that they embrace technology features so that we can attract the younger folks. Looking at the future of the CU industry, if you're going to survive, you're going to have to replace the baby-boomers with Generations X and Y.”
Citing other statistical growth patterns and benefits since converting to the new generation Java based FLEX System, Mr. Haas also reported one of the system's greatest advantages, "Someone with very little IT knowledge could do very well with this system." CMC's Senior Vice President, Sean Holcomb added, “. . . feature-rich doesn't translate to complex or high-maintenance, FLEX runs in-house at ProMedica on "simple" IBM-Java architecture on a single server – and there's no need for a full-time IT person to support it”.
For complete details, the February, 2010 article may be found at
http://www.cujournal.com/issues/14_06/why-one-small-cu-traded-in-basic-core-system-1001918-1.html
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