BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – No more $5 pencils at Affinity FederalCredit Union. The $1.3 billion CU has automated purchasing for its390 or so employees, using a software solution called EpicorProcurement. One or two employees at each of the credit union'sapproximately two dozen locations are authorized to go into thesystem and place orders from a catalog, creating efficiencies bothin what's being bought and where it's being bought, says GeorgiannBird, controller at 116,000-member Affinity (www.affinityfcu.org).“Our purchasing guy was always complaining about `$5 pencils,'”Bird says. “Clearly, when you give someone 3-inch catalogs, itreally covers their choices and cuts down on what they werespending.” Next up is getting that paper catalog into the systemelectronically, Bird adds. The procurement solution is part of thecredit union's use of the Epicor for Financial Services suite ofintegrated financial accounting, reporting and budgeting software.A few dozen credit unions are among the thousands of clients usingthe suite, which allows users to cut down on man hours andinaccuracies of manual entries, automate and consolidate accountingand reporting activities, and generate reports in real time orclose to it, according to James Norwood, vice president of productmarketing at Epicor Software Corp. (www.epicor.com) in Irvine,Calif. Norwood says his company's smaller clients, including somecredit unions, are often replacing such tools as Quicken softwareto cope with growth, along with Excel spreadsheets widely used atinstitutions of all sizes. And regardless of size, there are issuesthat come with rapid expansion, Norwood says. “The first thing thatgets exposed is that most of the systems in place are not talkingto each other, so you start to get inaccuracies because ofre-keying,” he says. “So there's the value of seamless integrationfrom the membership system to the financials, plus the ability todeliver Web-based financial reports to stakeholders certainlyweekly, if not daily.” Integration with its XP Systems coreplatform was a key for Affinity, Bird says, especially since thecredit union operates a family of CUSOs, further complicatingreporting functions that now are integrated using the Epicorsoftware to the point that the monthly closing process was reducedby two days. And then there's purchasing and procurement. “Forinstance, forms and things like marketing collateral,” Bird says.“Now our various locations have to account for them in theirreporting, hold them in inventory and expense them out when thetime comes. “No longer is our inventory guy freaking out like hewas when he saw how much stuff was in the closets at some of thebranches.” And Affinity is not done exploiting the virtues of itsvirtual quartermaster. “We're trying to figure out where we want togo with it, how to automate procurement and our reporting functionseven further,” Bird says. One option may be to have stakeholders,such as staffers and board members, simply navigate to a centrallocation and look at reports, rather than pushing the informationthrough e-mail. -

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