Customer Snapshot
Institution: FAIRWINDS Credit Union
Business/Industry: Credit Union
Location: Orlando, FL, USA
Webpage: www.fairwinds.org
Founded: 1949
UC4 Customer: 2006
Technical Environment: Open Solutions
The Company
FAIRWINDS Credit Union is the largest locally-owned credit union serving Central Florida with 37 branch locations, 140,000 members and $1.6 billion in assets. FAIRWINDS is committed to providing leading-edge technology in banking services featuring online banking, bill pay, e-Statements and more. In addition, FAIRWINDS continually explores innovative software and processes for the most efficient banking experience for its members.
The Challenge
FAIRWINDS converted to the Open Solutions core business platform in 2006, but lacked automated job scheduling tools for daily and overnight processing. This created operational inefficiencies, manual work and increased opportunities for error. As a consequence, IT staff had to be allocated to perform and monitor daily/overnight processing tasks, an extra cost to the credit union.
“Our batch scheduling at the time was archaic,” said Nicholas Richard, senior systems operator, FAIRWINDS Credit Union. “We needed to automate in order to be a ‘lights out’ shop at night and eliminate the need for someone to monitor all night watching a screen to make sure that the processes were going right.”
In addition to its need to automate processing, FAIRWINDS required an automation solution that allowed it to create customized jobs and applications so that it could deliver on its promise of innovating and maximizing efficiency, ultimately returning value to its members.
The Solution
When FAIRWINDS identified its need for a customizable automation package, they needed to only look at one solution before making a decision—the UC4 Automation Engine®. After a referral from Open Solutions, FAIRWINDS decided that UC4 had the right level of features and capabilities to fulfill its needs in the immediate and long term.
UC4 was initially implemented to automate batch scheduling, visualize workflows and aid the company in identifying and fixing errors. The solution allowed them to reduce the chances of human error and overhead in IT operations. They were also able to see the entire workflow through a single pane of glass for end-to-end scheduling. Now, UC4’s capabilities have expanded far beyond that in the organization. UC4 is increasingly used to create custom applications. With UC4 Application Manager, FAIRWINDS is able to create jobs that test online banking, jobs that test real-time connections for debit cards and custom files for month-end member statements that reduce run times. UC4 also enables the company to substitute variables, dynamically set jobs, and test and compare processes together.
A recent project that FAIRWINDS embarked on with UC4 was a custom application to automate access to FedLine, a web technology to access critical payment services, including account services, check services, FedCash® services, FedACH® services, Fedwire® funds service, Fedwire securities service and national settlement service.
UC4 works with FAIRWINDS FedLine solution, Tumbleweed, to automate the entire transaction process and send alerts when errors in the process are detected. It took FAIRWINDS only one month to implement the FedLine automation. Now FAIRWINDS has a direct connection to FedLine, enhancing service to members and cutting down on manual processing.
The Results
After implementing the UC4 Automation Engine, FAIRWINDS no longer relies on manual batch processing, which has made it a ‘lights out’ shop, cutting down on required manpower and cost. It previously retained a staff of four that was dedicated to batch processing. FAIRWINDS has cut that down to two, freeing up the other staff to do different functions in the IT organization.
The automation has also given FAIRWINDS a technological competitive advantage. The FedLine automation enabled the company to post members’ payroll deposits about four hours earlier than normal, giving members quicker access to their money and giving FAIRWINDS a leg up on the competition. “Application Manager is a great asset to us. I think it is an amazing tool,” said Nicholas.
“It allows us to create a series of custom jobs to simplify processing, allows us to operate more consistently and provides better service for internal and external customers.”
To Be Continued
“We are barely scratching the surface of what UC4 can do for us and plan to do more things in the future,” said Nicholas. “The technology package provides us so many tools to improve our applications and create automation across several different environments.”
FAIRWINDS currently has UC4 V8, the newest version of the Workload Automation Engine, in a test environment and will be going live shortly. It is looking for UC4 V8 to enable the creation of more custom applications for its online banking system. FAIRWINDS will also be embarking on a project to automate report writing in order to cut system loads down when running reports.
UC4’s new Agent for Web Services and VMware solutions are also on the horizon for FAIRWINDS as it looks to further its SOA and virtualization application development.
At A Glance
Business Challenges
- Reduce time and cost spent on manual batch scheduling
- Become a ‘lights out’ shop
- Create custom applications that would add value to internal and external customers
Benefits
- Fully automated batch scheduling to become a ‘lights out’ shop and reduce time and cost
- Creation of custom applications to deliver services in a more timely fashion to internal and external customers
- Graphical views of workflow
- Error notification
“I praise Applications Manager and UC4. I think it is an amazing tool. It allows us to create a series of custom jobs to simplify processing, allows us to operate more consistently and provides better service for internal and external customers."
Nicholas Richard, Senior Systems Operator
FAIRWINDS Credit Union, USA
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