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Chelsea Groton Bank's Feel Good About Your Bank slogan extends beyond words to their people. Identifi recently met with several members of the dedicated Chelsea Groton team. We came away with an appreciation for their dedication to making their customer's banking experience a better one.
William Lidestri, SVP, Director of Operations & Technology is driving innovation at Chelsea Groton. Using Identifi Work business process automation software for Accounts Payable vendor invoice approval, Mr. Lidestri has successfully increased productivity by thirty percent (30%).
Additional innovations initiatives to the create the bank of the future. Margaret Blundon, VP/Business Intelligence Manager and Matt Benoit, Business Process Analyst/Business Intelligence proudly display Intuiface. Intuiface will be installed in their branch of the future opening in October.
Intuiface will allow the customer to be self-service, utilizing the touch interface to learn about the various products and services offered by Chelsea Groton Bank. The Chelsea branch of the future will also provide financial training classes to the public.
Max Spelman, AVP Operations Manager working with Amy Prince, Sr. Deposit Operations Representative use Identifi Document to file Power of Attorney (POA) documents. This has proven to be a huge time saver, obtaining documents when needed using Identifi's KWYK KeyWhatYouKnow patent pending search engine.
Chelsea Groton plans on using the Identifi OLE Online eSign to process new POA’s. Identifi is also used for business banking applications, operations and cash management.
Identifi is very pleased to announce our partnership with Safety Harbor CoderDojo. CoderDojo is a worldwide movement of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for kids 7 to 17. The CoderDojo concept began in Ireland in 2011 and has since expanded to 1,100 Dojos in 63 countries.
When we first heard about CoderDojo, we knew it was something we wanted to get involved with. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was already an active Dojo in our own backyard! The Safety Harbor CoderDojo was started in 2015 by Dojo Champions Nancy Vellucci and Anastasia Underwood. Identifi Senior Vice President of Software and Solutions, Aaron Stine reached out to Nancy and Anastasia to see if we could work together. There was an immediate connection and we started collaborating in October of last year.
Since then, we’ve worked together to provide the resources the Dojo needs to be successful. In addition to financial support, Identifi staff also volunteer their time as mentors in the program. That’s been instrumental in expanding the scope of the technology available to learn as well helping each Dojo session run more smoothly.
One of the great things about CoderDojo is how it flips the classroom concept. There’s no lecturing or traditional teaching. Instead, Ninjas (students) learn on their own as well as from each other. We provide resource cards called “Sushi cards” that they can use to learn new skills. Ninjas work at their own pace to create their code projects. We reinforce peer learning with “Team Tickets”. Ninjas can earn a Team Ticket whenever they help out another Ninja. Team tickets are required to complete projects so everyone is motivated to help!
Ninjas earn achievements in the form of belts and badges each time they complete a project. They earn colored belt pins just like a regular Dojo.
They also receive a badge that represents the coding language they used to earn their belt. Ninjas can display their belts and badges by pinning them to their lanyard and wearing them at the Dojo.
As they advance, Ninjas are required to create projects that contribute to the “social good”. For example, they can create a new website that benefits the local community or create an app that helps their school. This reinforces the practical benefits that can come from technology.
We’re thrilled to be supporting the growth of kids in the Tampa Bay Area. Every Ninja in the Dojo will gain a better understanding of the technology that’s driving our world. And for some, CoderDojo may be an avenue to a software or engineering job in the future!
We’re enjoying the ability to give back to the community that has supported us and could not be happier with our combined success!
Approximately 60% of the average employee’s day is spent working on an organization’s records and documents. How much of that time is truly productive and how much of it is wasted? When dealing with content creation, storage, archiving, distribution, and transfer throughout an enterprise, there are often significant areas for improvement. A cloud-based consolidation and distribution center can vastly reduce the amount of time employees need to spend on document management while also improving business outcomes and customer service.
Boosting Productivity and Reducing Time to Market
With the majority of employee time being spent on document management, there are many opportunities to boost productivity and efficiency. Moving to the cloud allows an organization to take advantage of superior resources and an always accessible platform, both of which drive innovation and make it faster and easier for employees to process their documents effectively. Employees will be able to connect and collaborate from anywhere in the world, and thus they can quickly complete products and reduce the organization’s time to market. The enterprise content management (ECM) market is growing faster than the overall software market, as more organizations find that improving their ECM is one of the fastest ways to reduce project time and boost productivity. Time to market can be extraordinarily important for many organizations, especially those with close competition. Through cloud ECM, organizations can remain competitive with other businesses as they, too, invest in newer technologies.
Increased Reliability, Scalability, and Elasticity
Reliability is a key component of success. Up to 27% of businesses have suffered a loss of reputation due to poor document management. This affects customer retention, customer acquisition, and word-of-mouth advertising.
Cloud-based ECM gains all of the traditional benefits of the cloud. Cloud ECM can offer greater uptime than on-premises solutions, it can scale upwards through the deployment of additional resources, and has the elasticity to deploy resources on-the-fly to compensate for sudden or unexpected intervals of increased usage. All of this amounts to better service for customers and a far more productive and efficient environment for employees. Elasticity has the additional benefit of ensuring that the service is reliable and that organizations don’t need to pay for resources when they don’t need them. Scalability prevents an organization from being forced to invest too much in their infrastructure before they truly need it.
Lower Cost of Deployment and Ownership
By far the biggest driver of cloud-based enterprise content management is cost. When polling organizations, 38% reported that they were interested in cloud-based ECM for the purposes of cost reduction, compared to running their ECM solutions from on-premises servers. Deploying an ECM system on-premises means investing heavily in network infrastructure and physical assets, whereas a cloud-based ECM platform can be quickly deployed and scaled to suit the organization’s budget and needs. ECM deployments may contain as little or as much of an organization’s documents as desired and the costs are fluid; they can be reduced if the organization’s need is reduced. On premise servers and infrastructure often need to be upgraded to compensate for company growth and older equipment. This isn’t necessary with cloud-based ECM deployments, which simply requisition and provision resources as needed.
Integration With Business Process Management
Business process management (BPM) and enterprise content management need to work together for the best business outcomes. For most businesses, their documents are their processes.
Integrating BPM and ECM allows for fewer bottlenecks, improved overall efficiency, increased visibility, improved responsiveness, and fewer human errors. Cloud-based solutions can be easily and quickly integrated with each other for full support and consolidation. Many modern organizations are moving their entire infrastructure to the cloud, including BPM, ERP and CRM systems, and, of course, ECM. By managing and maintaining all of these components through the cloud, an organization can create an always-on completely connected and consolidated network.
BPM and ECM solutions can also be used to reduce liability and improve regulatory compliance, as they create a complete audit trail for documents and procedures, ensuring that the organization always has records for the work completed and the details of that work.
Universal Accessibility and Improved Collaboration
Cloud platforms can be used to effectively connect offices from city to city or nation to nation. Not only can organizations leverage the power of a global office, but they can also empower employees with the flexibility to set their own hours or work from home. Flexible work schedules aid in courting top talent, sourcing affordable talent, and keeping employees happy and productive. Cloud-based systems can be accessed from anywhere in the world and are “always on,” allowing for improved collaboration and the support of multiple time zones and regions.
Through a cloud-based ECM, an organization can freely grow throughout the globe. And by integrating a cloud-based ECM with other cloud-based solutions, better collaboration can be achieved throughout business processes. Cloud-based solutions can work on virtually any platform and generally only need a browser to connect to, freeing up employees to work from anywhere and to work on multiple devices. On-premises ECM applications can cost $1 million or more, with $200,000 or more being invested in hardware alone. Not only do cloud-based ERP solutions have a lower cost of deployment and maintenance, but they can significantly improve productivity and efficiency by creating an always-on solution through which employees can effectively collaborate and share.
Document management is a core business process that has to be effectively streamlined and managed for the overall productivity of a business. Through cloud-based enterprise content management solutions, an organization can improve the efficiency of every level of their business operations, accelerating speed to market and their customer happiness.
For additional information contact sales@identifi.net
On January 1, 2017, the world changed for credit unions. At least for credit unions serious about Business Banking. In place of a fixed percentage of assets, a cap based on net worth (in other words, tied to the credit union’s ability to absorb lending risk) was implemented. Prior to January 1, NCUA waiver delays resulted in the loss of many good loan deals (and sometimes business clients). In place of the waivers, credit unions now must have sound lending policies, and are judged on how well they follow their policies.
The new NCUA rules create tremendous growth opportunities for credit unions. The best small business clients can contribute 5-10 times the profitability of an individual consumer, and business clients expect to pay extra for time savings and banking advice. However, their decision criteria for selecting a banking partner is different, and requires a radical change in how credit unions think about their service and pricing models. As regulations started to loosen in the late 1990s, credit unions with excess lending capacity saw business loans as a vehicle to produce better returns than they were getting with traditional investments. However, because of the lengthy delays in approvals, and lack of competitive deposit products and merchant services, some credit unions became the “lender of last resort” and many sizeable portfolios were written down or written off altogether when these less desirable, single product borrowers defaulted.
Traditionally, credit union business banking programs have focused primarily on the lending side, but deposits and merchant services account for nearly 80% of small business banking profits, vs only 22% for loans (see chart, Oliver Wyman, 2011). Rates and fee pricing are lower priorities for businesses than having tools to accept payments, access to working capital, ease of making ACH and wire payments, and sound banking advice.
To build a solid, profitable, and sustainable business banking offering, credit unions need to employ people, process, and technology along with competitive products.
Experienced Business Bankers- Forbes describes a small business as “one that does not have a CFO”. This role often belongs to the business owner. A key part of the value of the banking relationship is the ability to get solid financial advice. That takes experienced business bankers. Not just lenders, but staff with experience in deposits, payments, and operations.
Commercial Deposits- Business customers have used community banks or larger banks in the past, and expect a broad variety of deposit offerings. Along with traditional checking, savings, and IRA accounts, they expect their banking partner to offer limits and controls on who can transact business with the CU on behalf of the business client, based on their role with the firm. Banks have offered automated sweeping of excess balances from operating accounts to high-yield accounts for over 20 years. Positive pay (a feature that allows the business to view and approve their checks before they are paid) can help them avoid check fraud losses. And analysis accounts that reward the business client for the overall relationship help attract and retain the most profitable business clients.
Business Services- The most important banking function for many businesses is enabling them to take payments for their products and services. Roughly 30% of small business banking profits are from payments-merchant card payment processing and remote capture and transmission of check images.
Business Online Banking/Mobile/Cash Management- The most valuable commodity for a business owner is time. The right set of capabilities can save your business clients valuable time transacting their banking business, and neutralize the huge brick and mortar advantages of the big banks. Most banks now put the ability to send wires and ACH originations and payments, pay bills and control card limits in their business client’s home office or even in the palm of their hand.
Commercial Lending- Along with more traditional forms of business credit such as term loans, business credit cards and vehicle loans, many businesses need more sophisticated lending products. SBA loans create great value for both clients and the lender, allowing businesses the capital they need to grow and expand, with government guarantees protecting the lender if they default. Loans with variable payment schedules tied to seasonal cash flows, flexible collateral arrangements and commercial construction loans allow the credit union to serve as a “one stop shop” for most of their business clients.
Security- Small businesses are frequently the target of fraud, sometime from their own employees. They expect a banking partner that has the expertise and technology to protect them from cyberattacks, check and payments fraud, and embezzlement.
And finally, speed. Efficient processes and tools for application processing, credit review and funding will help you offer business clients the same amazing service experience credit unions are known for with their consumer members.
Even after credit unions hire experienced business bankers and set up policies and processes, technology often becomes the primary barrier to success. Most credit unions run on core processing systems designed in the 1980s, long before credit unions were allowed to offer business banking. Many offer online banking platforms that serve the needs of consumers well, but lack essential cash management and business functionality.
Credit union IT teams and traditional credit union technology vendors often lack familiarity with business banking, banking regulations and the third-party systems that help serve business banking operations, and their business clients. Choosing the right solutions that will integrate with your current environment and fit your budget can be difficult and risky. A detailed strategy with clear requirements, budgets and timelines will go a long way toward mitigating the risks involved in complex technology decisions.
Enlisting outside advisors with experience in helping credit unions develop and execute the right technology strategy to enable their business services program can go a long way towards minimizing the risk and disruption of a complex technology selection and deployment.
At Arriba Advisors, our partners have over 25 years combined experience in assessing the business banking technology needs of credit unions, and helping them evaluate, select and contract for the right technologies at the right cost of ownership. Feel free to contact us for a free business banking technology market overview.
George McGourty- Originally from Boston and based in Tampa, George has spent his entire 30-year career helping financial institutions evaluate, select, and implement enterprise technologies. He has held senior sales and executive leadership positions with Fiserv, FIS, CSI, Deluxe and Open Solutions as well as co-founding an IT services firm that was later acquired by a Fortune 1000 technology company.
George co-founded Arriba Advisors to help community financial institutions understand and evaluate their technology options, and gain the most value from their technology investments. He is an accomplished negotiator, having personally negotiated over 1,000 technology and services contracts while sitting on the vendor side of the table.
Tom Russell- A native of Miami, Florida, Tom has spent the past twenty years helping financial institutions navigate complex technology and professional services decisions to create efficiencies and gain competitive advantage. Tom has held senior sales roles at TWS Systems, Open Solutions, and Fiserv, managing complex enterprise sales valued up to $25M.
In his role as co-founder and partner at Arriba Advisors, Tom helps our clients understand the technology options available in the market, and how to match their needs and budget to secure the right solution at the right cost of ownership, while identifying and managing the risks inherent in a complex technology purchase.
Fun times at the The Florida Aquarium. Great food and libations were on hand while Identifi employees, spouses, friends and SO's enjoyed the exhibits. It is a 250,000-square-foot aquarium . We owned the place for the evening. From river otters to sharks, there are more than 20,000 aquatic animals and plants at the Aquarium.
Integra Business Systems, Inc. d.b.a. Identifi, is the developer of the iDentifi Enterprise Content Management (document imaging) software. We offer a paperless environment to include desktop and online e-sign, e-receipt for teller, document tracking, scan, workflow, analytics and report archival in an on-premise or hosted (SaaS) environment. Identifi is integrated with your primary business processes for easy access and elimination of duplicate work. We are cross browser and mobile ready.
The technology business past, present and future is pretty much a wild ride. Every day we strive to reinvent ourselves. Founded in 1988, Integra Business Systems, Inc., d.b.a. Identifi, celebrated 28 years in business March 2016. To put things into perspective, in 1988 gas was .91 per gallon.
History is such a great teacher, and it has taught us at Identifi, you are the reason we are still here. The secret sauce to being successful is you, our customers, partners, vendors and employees, alike.
Through all the transitions in products and technology, our customers and partners have needed great products and services. We’ve provided it.
To be successful in the technology business, we have to continue to invest heavily in, what we like to call, “intellectual property," a.k.a., Identifi employees.
Our mission is to connect people with technology. We must embrace the constant evolution in technology and in our lives, to make our employees, our partners and our customer’s lives simpler, more productive, and more fulfilling.
We’ve always prided ourselves in providing great products and service. Now we need to take it to the next level, to connect you with the people you interact with every day.
In an increasingly commoditized environment, the risks of the consumer being bombarded with more competitive choices will increase. Creating loyalty through innovation (partnerships) will become more important. Identifi is and has been successful in forming partnerships which will be critical to enable "connected" anything.
Many businesses are saddled with legacy document imaging systems a.k.a., Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technology. Sooner or later companies with legacy ECM systems will have to bite the bullet. We are well positioned to convert and upgrade legacy ECM products to the latest web-based technology.
We know we have to make our technology simple. How do we do that? We have to keep pace with Mobile and the Cloud technology. We do that by using the latest browser based development technology. We build products that employ Responsive Design.
Identifi can connect you and your customers on any device, in all areas of your business, so you can be more productive, for you and your customers.
Our vision is to build products that make your life simpler. We believe we can improve the way you do business and the way your customers connect. We do that by focusing on helping people work together and incorporate the latest technology to make that possible. We are busy inventing the future of collaboration software. Join us. Welcome to Identifi 5.0.
Monday, Feb 22nd
6:00 - 11:00 Fishing Charter – Clearwater Beach Marina
Jim Bryant, Integra’s lead Implementation Coordinator will LEAD you out into the Florida Gulf to catch the finest of Spanish Mackerel, King Fish and Grouper on this off shore fishing expedition!
10:00 – 1:00 Winter the Dolphin Tour – Clearwater Aquarium
This is not your typical aquarium! The Clearwater Aquarium is a marine life rescue center and home of Winter the dolphin, star and inspiration of the hit movie Dolphin Tale, which was filmed on location. Winter is not the only animal others include, sea turtles, otters, sharks & pelicans. Come be inspired and educated by their ongoing work of rescue, rehabilitation and release. Includes a boat ride. Meet Abby Ross our VP of Sales in the lobby.
1:00 – 4:00 Beach Tennis/Volleyball – Sheraton Sand Key Resort
Come join Chris Oppenheimer, AVP of Customer Support out on the beach volleyball courts at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort for some fun! Combine, volleyball & tennis and you get the exciting sport of Beach Tennis. You don’t need to be a professional to play and you are always welcome to just come out and watch by the tiki bar.
6:00 – 8:00 Welcome Reception – Poolside/Sheraton Sand Key Resort
Welcome! Join the Integra staff, Partners and other Integra customers for dinner and drinks poolside at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort. Network with your peers and enjoy the live Caribbean music. Drink, Dance and enjoy the beautiful sunset on Clearwater Beach!
Tuesday, Feb 23rd
8:00 - 4:00 Registration – Outside of Palm/Bay Rooms
8:00 – 8:45 Breakfast – Island Room II
Get ready to learn! Join the Vendors and Integra employees and your peers for breakfast. Start out your morning well while preparing for an exciting day of education.
8:45 – 9:30 State the Union Address – Palm/Bay Rooms
President and CEO of Integra, Alan Wiessner will open the day’s events with a recap of where Integra has been and where we are going. Get ready for a big reveal!
9:30 – 10:45 Keynote Speaker – Palm/Bay Rooms
Bob Hirschfeld a “Cybersatirist” takes a satirical look at business and technology and the world around us. Start the morning out laughing with Bob who was a contributing writer for Jay Leno from the Tonight Show.
10:45 – 11:15 Break