According to Xtend President Scott Collins, The goal of CU*OverDrive is to provide a comprehensive annual marketing plan in a can for our credit union partners that leverages the resources we have within our two CUSOs. By helping execute a calendar of professional, full-service marketing campaigns as an extension of the credit union marketing team, we are confident that we can drive member awareness and have a positive impact on credit union profitability. Todays marketplace demands a systematic approach and a variety of channels and that is exactly what CU*Overdrive will provide.

Collins introduced the concept during Xtends recent Annual Stockholders Meeting, including the draft of a marketing calendar that would include a combination of campaigns with savings/thrift, lending, and general industry focus. Campaigns will include consulting, core system configuration, artwork and web content, collaborative printing pricing, and electronic communications with an option to activate inbound/outbound call center support as well.

The CUSO expects to be ready for implementation by the 4th quarter of 2009.

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According to the CUSO, compromised ATM/Debit and Credit card events continue to be on the rise. The recovery process is very tedious and frustrating to members and institutions regardless of the number of plastics involved. The Gividends Team at CU*Answers is offering a new compromised plastics program, available in three different service levels. The services offered from this program range from sending maintenance files to card vendors, updating card configurations to designing personalized communication campaigns and directly contacting members affected by a compromised card situation.

Shirley Moore, EFT Account Executive for CU*Answers says, Were very excited to offer these services to credit unions. Unfortunately, compromised card instances are on the rise. We want our credit unions to know that we are available to help in any situation, big or small, regardless of the number of cards affected.

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Julie Gessner, Xtend’s Manager of Communications Services, believes the secret of the program’s success is “our ability to go from analyzing data, identifying a member audience, and delivering a specifically targeted message across multiple delivery channels in a matter of minutes. And we do so for over three dozen credit unions at a time.” According to Gessner the key ingredients are the CU*BASE core data processing system from CU*Answers that is utilized by all Member Reach clients, a passion for mining the data it captures, and developing short, timely messages that tell the member “we are paying attention to what is going on in your relationship with us.”

Scott Collins, President of Xtend, attributes the success of the program to “our willingness to do the busy work every day in support of our credit union partners, and because of our scale we can do so at the incredibly low price point. The CU*BASE tool set that we have in common has been solid for years — all we did was provide the database analyst mentality, a passion to generate a buzz about credit unions, and a nobrainer price point of $50 a week.”

The CUSO is also evaluating a future expansion of its HTML messaging and electronic newsletter services.

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WESCO Net recently announced that in early February, it had installed a new centralized IT monitoring, reporting, and asset management network at its Kentwood, MI processing facility that will house the new Deepsite application for clients utilizing WESCO Net for Managed Services. The solution will provide end-to-end monitoring and management of the clients’ data network over the Internet. Deepsite is designed to:

• Maximize system uptime for managed servers and devices by monitoring and alerting, allowing support staff to resolve issues prior to failure.
• Increases security by integrating leading anti virus providers, patch management, security auditing software with alerting and reporting capabilities.
• Improve performance by analyzing trends to identify performance bottlenecks
• Control assets with real time asset inventory capabilities to provide deep visibility into computing and network assets.
• Provide secure 24×7 customer web portal with access to reports on IT assets

WESCO Net Managed Services include Comprehensive Firewall Management Services, which incorporates Intrusion Prevention/ Detection, Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Removal and Content Filtering, and the Server Assurance Program, which ensures a credit union’s critical data servers (fileservers, email and database) are configured properly and maintained as new service packs and manufacturer fixes are released. The program also ensures that backup and anti-virus systems are fully operational.

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