Robert Taylor was so impressed with the core processing systemat the smaller credit union his Idaho State University FederalCredit Union was merging that the CEO is not only keeping thatplatform around, he's buying a piece of the company.

Earlier this year, the $130 million ISUCU took in the $17 million Pocatello Teachers Federal Credit Unionin Pocatello, Idaho. 

Along with its 2,600 members, the 15,700-member ISUCU got afirst-hand look at the CUProdigy Core system from Credit Union DataProcessing Inc., a CUSO in Farmington, Utah.

“The normal assumption is that the system at the larger creditunion would be the continuing one but I guess we decided otherwiseafter seeing what it had to offer and talking to their people andseeing how open both truly were,” Taylor said.

As a result of the merger, ISUCU now has 55 employees and fivebranches – three in Pocatello and one each in Blackfoot and IdahoFalls – and seven surcharge-free ATMs on the Idaho State campus.Taylor said his merged staff played a major role in the decision tolook at staying with the smaller system.

“The tellers loved the CUDP system and kept badgering to take alook at it until I did. I was pretty close minded about it untilthen,” Taylor said.

His first impression came when he went to a Pocatello Teachersbranch with his Mac.

“CUDP set me up on it in just a couple minutes and there I wason Firefox looking at names and accounts. There's no way I couldhave done that with some other systems,” Taylor said. “It's veryplatform independent.”

Taylor also found that he was able to talk the same languagewith the programming staff at CUDP, something he said has notalways been the case in the past.

“I don't want to mention the company's name, but I had adiscussion a couple years ago with a programmer we were workingwith, and he just couldn't understand what was saying. I had himrepeat it back to me and really, it was very frustrating,” Taylorrecalled.

Work is under way now to meet the expected conversion date ofDec. 31 this year, Taylor said. ISUCU currently runs on the CUnifyplatform from Open Solutions Inc. Prior to that, it ran on theSOSystems solution that Open Solutions purchased and eventuallybegan sunsetting.

The credit union has a demanding university membership base andis a power user of the Open Solutions system, Taylor said. The ITmanager at ISUCU is active in their users group and has been aninstructor for them in report writing, he pointed out.

“We're always pushing for more and I think we're now at thepoint where the bigger companies probably can't turn our demandsaround soon enough,” Taylor said. “My members are demanding thingsthat demand a different architecture, more bill pay, moremulti-channel banking. CUDP has developed the [applicationprogramming interface] and has the people we need to provide atruly open system and work with us to get what we need inhere.”

They're integrating with a number of different vendors at ISUCU,including FICS for mortgage servicing, CardWizard for instant-issuedebit cards and a marketing customer information file system fromJack Henry & Associates that the credit union used to extractdata and segment the new members from the former Pocatello TeachersFCU.

Taylor said he also was impressed enough to persuade his boardof directors to purchase a 16% stake in CUDP.

“Who'd ever heard of Google or Facebook before they becamemainstream?  That's the way I feel about CUProdigy; it'sthe next step in the evolution of credit union core processingsystems,” Taylor said.

Now with 16 credit unions using its core processing platform,CUDP has completely rewritten and upgraded it over the past fouryears, the CUSO said. Along with interfacing with third partyvendors, an emphasis was placed on business continuity and disasterrecovery.

“If my system goes down I have continuous backup of my databaseat an offsite location to get us up and running quickly and I won'thave backup servers to deal with. If we lose one branch we can justgo to another with no hiccups at all,” Taylor said.

That flexibility comes from the database replication technologyCUDP is now using, said Charlie Fulks, president/CEO of CUDP. He also said that while his CUSO's small size makes it easierto work closely with and be responsive to its credit union clients,it's not as simple as it sounds.

“It's not that easy. We have several developers involved inmaking all this possible, including what we call in interfaceengineer who finds ways that allow us to handle all thecommunications between the third parties and us,” Fulks said.

The 21-year-old CUSO also has developed not just a can-do, but amust-do philosophy as it re-developed its core platform over thepast few years.

“Several years ago, one of our credit union people, a boardmember of our CUSO, described how it was beginning to feel like hewas a large credit union trapped in a small credit union body,”Fulks said. “That's how it felt knowing he had to be able toprovide everything to his members that they would get from a largecredit union.”

While the CUDP system can scale to large credit unions, Fulkssaid, being a small CUSO also has its advantages. Taylor saidthat's why he asked his board of directors at ISUCU to invest inCUDP, eventually buying 16% of the ownership.

“Our credit union's bottom line is to increase membersatisfaction, not profitability for a few shareholders,” Taylorsaid. “That's what I love about the fact CUDP is a CUSO. Thephilosophy is much the same.”