Baxter Credit Union

Baxter Credit Union (BCU) is a unique credit union in many ways: they are one of the nation's largest and achieved this ranking in less than 25 years in operation; they operate twenty four branches spanning eight states and Puerto Rico; and they run three other 'virtual credit unions' for their large and technologically savvy Select Employee Groups (SEGs). In order to provide world class service to their 100,000+ far flung members, BCU must have state-of-the-art technology. That is why they chose Wescom Resources Group (WRG) as a technology integration partner.

Over the course of the last year, BCU has been working on a major redesign of their website and its iTeller online banking functions. Jeff Johnson, vice president of IS for Baxter, and his team of twenty five IS employees were tasked with not only re-developing Baxter's website and in-house online banking program - which are bi-lingual with a Spanish version, but also the sites and online banking programs for their three large SEGs: Cardinal Health, CDW and Boston Scientific. Jeff explains that "we really needed a connector to our host Symitar system and since I have known some of the senior managers at WRG for many years, I had complete confidence in them and their solutions." He was also quite familiar with WRG's sponsor, Wescom Credit Union which is one of the nation's largest credit unions with nearly $3 billion in assets and 234,000 members.

With many years of Symitar experience under their belts, WRG is uniquely positioned to develop software solutions for Symitar's Episys core system. One of their most powerful products is CU Integrator which provides a stable, efficient, and standard integration layer for interfacing with Episys. According to Jeff, "CU Integrator was a very critical element in our plan to totally integrate our website and our online banking program." Developed by their in-house IS staff and outside software consultants, Baxter's online banking program is wholly customized to their members' needs and BCU's senior management's specifications, as well as completely branded to their three main SEGs. "We were excited about working on this project and knew that WRG's competency in working with Symitar's product lines would really complement our team," says Jeff.

Once CU Integrator was installed and up and running, the experienced BCU developers went to work tying in their applications via CU Integrator into Episys. Jeff points out that "we have some excellent in-house programmers and they really put CU Integrator through the paces. We were pleased to find that whenever they needed some assistance, WRG's programmers and technical support staff were very responsive." Because they have heavy online usage, Baxter Credit Union could not afford any glitches with their new system. In fact, they assigned three Quality Assurance employees to test and re-test their new system. This thorough QA process entailed ongoing and detailed performance testing and transaction testing. The results: CU Integrator and the new online banking application came through with flying colors.

With extensive functional, performance, employee and member Beta testing behind them, BCU was ready to go live. Jeff enthuses that "the system has been very, very stable and the response times for our online bankers have been sub-second." BCU's websites receive tens of thousands of hits per day, while the online banking component experiences over 10,000 logins per day. Even under such a heavy load, all of the systems are performing flawlessly. Going forward, in addition to using Internet banking, the credit union will use CU Integrator as an integral component of their "middleware" to communicate with other installed user interfaces, such as its document generation system, title and appraisal retrieval interface, repair coverage application, telephone system "screen pop". Jeff and his staff look forward to the journey: "We know that WRG's products work well under our high volumes and tight specifications. WRG is a very progressive company with excellent employees who can deliver on their promises."