CUSOLaw.com is the web presence for the Messick & Weber law firm, located in Media, Pennsylvania.  Known for providing services to credit unions, CUSOs, and other third party service providers, the firm has gained industry recognition as a premier source for everything Credit Union, Collaboration, and CUSO-related.  The Knowledge Base comprised by the firm represents 20+ years of educational material and counsel documents related to credit union and CUSO representation.  Access to this information has been reserved for clients/ clients on retainer with the Messick & Weber firm.

According to CU*Answers, the partnership came to fruition after its Web Services team assisted with revamping the CUSOLaw.com website.  Recognizing the alignment of strategic goals and values, the teams of Messick & Weber and CU*Answers came together in collaboration, a core belief shared by both sides.

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CU*Answers provides Talent Source Portals via the Passageways P4 Portal solution, which allows credit unions to organize and structure the collective knowledge of its teams into discrete workgroups of information.  This tool centralizes collaborative communication to increase productivity among staff as it makes needed information easily accessible.  This information is hosted in CU*Answers SAS-70 certified datacenter and managed by WESCO Net professionals, eliminating worry about hardware or system security.

CU*Answers and Passageways have extended the discount rate to all CU*BASE clients, whether they are already Portal users, or interested in more information about the solution.

For more information, access: www.passageways.com/powwow_conference.php

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According to Xtend President Scott Collins, selecting the right partner proved more challenging than expected.  “We have been providing B2B chat services for nearly a year, but we knew that providing B2C support, especially in an authenticated and secure environment like home banking, required us to buy versus build.  From the onset, we preferred an enterprise solution because we felt we had more control, but most of the recognized industry players were an ASP deployment.  In fact, when we first looked at LIVECHAT it did not have an enterprise solution either.  By the time we re-engaged with them this fall their enterprise solution was already deployed in several European financial institutions.  Over the next few months, our web services and home banking partners over at CU*Answers will put the LIVECHAT software and support team to the test so that we can move forward with confidence.”

Collins noted that several credit union clients were anxious to participate in the beta testing of the new web chat service and that the CUSO planned to be ready for this next by late winter or early spring.

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The new site for Sentinel Federal FCU is based on the widely popular WordPress with SiteControl platform, which has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards, as well as being named first runner-up in the Best Open Source PHP CMS category. The credit union’s newly redesigned site uses hybrid pages, post designs, and utilizes the built in link manager feature to manage the header and footer links.

Sentinel Federal Credit Union has approximately 7,500 members providing a full portfolio of financial services from 4 locations. For more information about Sentinel Federal, go to http://sentinelfcu.org .

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The CU*Answers CUSO provides data processing and ancillary services to 165+ credit unions across the United States, ranging in size from 200 members to over 60,000. Recognizing that not all credit unions may want or be able to afford a comprehensive e-document management package, CU*Answers offers its “CU*SPY” Vault (powered by eDOC Innovations) directly integrated into CU*BASE for capturing receipts, loan forms and photo ID’s. This option is low maintenance, easy to implement, and inexpensive.

For credit unions looking to implement a more comprehensive solution, CU*Answers works with its cuasterisk.com network partner, eDOC Innovations to provide two other options: eDOC Online, or an eDOC Inhouse Vault. Credit Unions also have the option of choosing an alternate 3rd party for its e-document management needs. The new website provides information and disambiguation of the various e-document solutions, to make it easier for credit unions to choose the best-fit option. The site is based on Wesco Net Web Services WordPress with SiteControl platform as a Content Management System and benefits from features such as site search, contact forms, and RSS feeds. For more information, check out the site at http://edocs.cuanswers.com.

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In March 2008, parent company CU*Answers launched the CEO Tickler program with the objective of challenging CEOs to set some goals for running their credit union business, while gaining insights into their membership base.  Each tickler newsletter includes challenges that are answered in a corresponding CEO Tickler Answers newsletter.

Topics for the 2009 year included Dashboards – Keep Your Eyes on the Road Ahead, which focused on utilizing CU*BASE dashboards to gauge the effectiveness of programs that drive credit unions forward, Strategic Online Banking Tactics, and Goals for Product & Services 2010.

This resource became so worthwhile that credit union staffers wanted the ability to reference the information outside of their email client.  The team at WESCO Net Web Services stepped in, and now these email newsletters are also published as part of cuanswers.com.

Visit online at http://cuanswers.com/ceo_ticklers/

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This impressive count includes many different credit union sites, MicroLender Pay Day Loan origination sites, Retailer Direct origination sites, Prime Alliance Mortgage origination sites, custom Risk Management Report Generators and cuasterisk.com corporate sites.

According to WESCO Net, this is a record year for the Web Services department, with the most new development it has ever done.  The launch of these new sites is in addition to the regular website updates requested by its clients.

David Damstra, Manager of Web Service says, “This has been an exciting year for us, not only have we been able to launch more web sites than we ever have before, but we’ve also been able to expand our services into innovative web applications and the new Talent Source portals.  We look forward to next year being even bigger.”

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The Risk Management Report Generator is a tool which allows clients of the CU*Answers network (cuasterisk.com) to complete their due diligence on services and products purchased from these CUSOs.  The creation of the product stemmed from requirements set forth by the NCUA instruction to credit unions to perform due diligence on vendor relationships.  In addition to storing answers modeled after the questions posed by the NCUA, is also allows credit unions to keep vital contract information along with legal opinions associated with the correlating contracts.  This application is a collaborative effort for a community of clients to establish responses to the questions, and these responses are available to others to use or model their own responses after.

In addition to the pilot site built for CU*Answers, the Web Services team also deployed a similar version for eDOC Innovations.

Jim Vilker, VP Professional Services for CU*Answers describes it as a “full vendor management system for credit unions that partner with the cuasterisk.com network.  It allows credit unions to not only complete their due diligence electronically, but to also view how their peers completed the assessment.”

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According to Xtend President Scott Collins, “The goal of CU*OverDrive is to provide a comprehensive annual ‘marketing plan in a can’ for our credit union partners that leverages the resources we have within our two CUSOs. We worked with a focus group of our credit union partners to develop twelve monthly campaigns covering product and services sets that include multiple lending products, savings/thrift, new member marketing, identity security, and general member awareness topics. We think this serves as a perfect complement to our partners’ current marketing plan because it fills in the gaps around their existing marketing plans. It keeps the momentum going for the entire year and frees up their staff to focus on the big projects.”

Campaigns will include consulting, core system configuration, artwork and web content, collaborative printing pricing, and electronic communications along with an option to activate inbound/outbound call center support from the Xtension Call Center. Collins reports that in just the first week, nine credit unions have signed up to include CU*OverDrive in their 2010 marketing plans.

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“Very simply put, E-Info is the delivery of content to e-statement members that comes as close as possible to content that is delivered to members inside their statement envelopes,” says Xtend President Scott Collins. “Many members have embraced electronic statements and newsletters as their preferred correspondence with their credit union. We are taking that a step further by presenting marketing content to the member on their way to view their e-statements, similar to tri-folds and hard-copy newsletters stuffed inside the envelopes with printed statements.”

The service is offered in two different forms. The first is what the CUSO calls In Your Face – the enewsletter or marketing piece is presented to the member when they click to view their e-statement. The second is being called a Teaser because the member is presented with a pop-up window after selecting the e-statement link and can click the banner for the full collateral piece. Collins believes that both formats will be popular with credit unions and members. He notes, “Electronic members are used to being marketed to in a different way and our credit union partners are excited about reaching them in as many ways as possible. Its up to the credit union to decide whether it’s In Your Face or Teaser will be most effective for their marketing plan.”

Participating in this initial release are First Trust Credit Union (Michigan City, IN), Focus Credit Union (Wauwatosa, WI), and Western Districts Members Credit Union (Grand Rapids, MI).

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