9 Steps to a Successful Host System Conversion

Last Thursday, 40 credit unions and vendors gathered on Callahan's webinar When Should You Convert Data Processors? The panelists of the call represented different stages of the assessment and conversion process and discussed the factors that led them to perform a dat

Last Thursday, 40 credit unions and vendors gathered on Callahan’s webinar When Should You Convert Data Processors? The panelists of the call represented different stages of the assessment andconversion process and discussed the factors that led them to perform a data processing conversion, the selection criteria used to evaluate potential host system providers and any lessons learned.

Rudy Pireira, CIO of Kinecta Federal Credit Union, was in charge of the data processing conversion that was completed at Kinecta FCU just one year ago His presentation provided insight into what he sees as the keys to a successful conversion. His 9 stepsinclude:

  1. Strong Project Management- Kinecta FCU hired a project manager who had previous conversion project management experience
  2. A core conversion team that represents every business unit – Kinecta’s core team initially started with 20 people who were then narrowed down to 7 core members. These 7 core members were in charge of making the decisions for each of their perspectivebusiness units.
  3. Mock Conversions – Kinecta FCU ran 5 mock conversions to reduce the number of surprises during the live conversions.
  4. CEO appointed CIO as the Conversion Czar: Kinecta’s CIO had complete authority to make any necessary decisions
  5. Over communication between members, employees, and business partners
  6. Willingness to stop development: Applications were postponed until post conversion and all service requests required CIO sign-off
  7. Core conversion team met frequently: Went from meeting weekly to meeting daily and included staff from new host system provider
  8. Active host system provider involvement: Have frequent and open dialogue
  9. Monthly phone conversations between CEO of Kinecta and CEO of host system provider

For more information on Kinecta’s successful conversion and the lessons they learned as well as the experience of the other panelists on Callahan’s webinar When Should You Consider a Data Processing Conversion? click here.

April 26, 2016

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