Standards for IT integrations? What does it mean?

During a recent review, a $1B credit union in the northeast was found to have 54 different third-party vendors integrated into core or vendor-to-vendor systems.

Fifty-four.

This excess of integration is tragically common and totally out of control. 54 is not a number that can be ignored. Considering each of those vendors cost money to integrate, the annual cost of integrating and maintaining those solutions easily runs into thousands of dollars annually. These costs—which will only increase as cores and vendors update and upgrade their services and processes—aren’t going away any time soon; members expect new access channels, payment systems, products and services, all of which require integration.

The only way credit unions can match these consumer expectations is to create uniform integration standards for the entire industry. Banks are demanding their own standards in order to reduce integration costs and improve time to market; to compete, credit unions must demand standards of our own.

We have to unite behind a single solution, and CUFX Standards is the best path for credit unions going forward. CUFX creates free, open-source standards that can be accessed and modified by all credit unions; once a standard is built, other credit unions can take it and apply it to their own vendor and core.

The economies of this collaborative effort are obvious. CUFX has demonstrated integration cost savings of up to 75%, and time to market is cut in half. In order to compete in the financial services industry, these benefits are not just nice-to-have—they’re absolutely essential.

How do you get involved?

The next time you draft an RFP for a product or service that requires integration with a core or vendor, include a clause that it be built on a standard that other credit unions can use through CUFX. Alternatively, if you already have an integration project in the pipeline, contact CUFX and they will help you and your core/vendor design an integration standard that can be implemented industry-wide. Like the standards themselves, CUFX provides these services completely free of charge.

The time has come for our movement to have a unified integration standard; join us in this great leap forward.

Contact CUFX at www.cufxstandards.com or call/email Rich Jones 720.256.4936 or busdev@cufxstandards.com to use an existing standard to help us create a standard.

Rich Jones

Rich Jones

A published author and engaging speaker, Rich Jones is President/CEO/Principal for Leaders2Leadership LLC. Prior to starting his own strategic planning agency he was Senior Vice President of Sales, ... Web: leading2leadership.com Details