What kind of company was COCC when you became President in 2001?
COCC was a mature company with an experienced and dedicated Board of Directors, talented management, great clients, terrific employees, and a deep heritage of customer service. My predecessor, Mark Pumiglia, who successfully led our company over his 35 years of service, created a culture of customer service excellence that puts the customer first. That culture still thrives today. Few people realize that our company has one of the longest records of service in the financial data processing business. We processed transactions for our first clients in 1967, before most of our competitors existed! When I became President in 2001, COCC had just completed a terrific Y2K performance that won kudos throughout the industry. More significantly, we started converting clients to our next generation client/server processing platform. This enormous effort brought our entire company together in a very meaningful way. Today, we are a company of 330 people who all have the same commitment, passion, and client focus. I feel extremely fortunate to have been given the opportunity to lead COCC forward.

What accomplishments since 2001 give you the greatest satisfaction today?
More than the state-of-the-art technology we have installed and the growth we have experienced, I am most proud of our service report card grades over the past 14 quarters. During that time, our clients have given us the highest grades in our 39 year history — well into the “excellent” range. That tells me a lot about the work we do and the promises we keep every day. Right behind our report cards is completing the conversion effort, which remains unprecedented in our industry. No other financial data processor has converted its entire client base to a next generation platform with virtually no runoff. Our clients praised the thoroughness of our efforts and helped fuel the impressive growth coming on the heels of that conversion. Following our conversions from 2001 – 2003, we increased the overall number of our clients from 94 to 141, with more to come. That is testimony to the quality and consistency of the service we provide.

What have you done over the past five years to help COCC achieve this level of success?
I have helped COCC succeed by capitalizing on our existing strengths.  We took advantage of our 10 year relationship with Open Solutions, Inc. of Glastonbury, Connecticut to deliver the leading core technology in the industry. No other
data processor has a more advanced core system, and no one is doing more with Open Solutions, Inc. to keep that system ahead of the competition. I helped bring our two organizations closer together to create the next leap forward for financial data processing — the soon-to-be-released .Net version of our core processing software.

What makes COCC special in today’s market for financial data processing services?
COCC offers the best technology, the strongest suite of services, and the most dedicated service staff — all supported by a cooperative ownership structure that maintains the highest level of quality in the industry. It’s an unbeatable combination. Because we use the latest open architecture processing environment, an institution’s conversion to COCC is the last conversion they will ever need to make. Our competition continues to apply band-aids to their 20 and 30 year old legacy technologies. Eventually, they will have to upgrade and convert their clients to a new system. We have already taken that important step. As a client-owned cooperative, COCC serves its clients in a different way. We use a regional approach to ensure that we can reach our clients quickly from our data center in Connecticut. The regional approach also focuses our operations and development efforts on finding opportunities to increase client efficiencies. Finally, we have exceptionally low turnover among our staff, which translates to strong experience throughout the company, and a long standing culture of being the best! That’s our service philosophy. That’s why COCC is special in today’s market for financial data processing services.

What are your plans going forward?
Certainly revenue growth is in COCC’s future, but it’s controlled growth at an annual rate of 5-10 percent. As a service business, we cannot afford to grow so quickly that we lose the qualities that make us successful. That’s why client feedback through our quarterly report card system and frequent contact with our clients is so important. Our efforts with Open Solutions, Inc. to deliver the industry’s only .Net technology solution are another important part of our future. This new technology, to be rolled out in 2007, gives our clients new functionality and efficiencies, while giving COCC an enormous advantage in the industry. .Net really is a tremendous leap forward for COCC and our clients. New security products under the Sentry Services umbrella and further progress in imaging and payments technology will round out our product efforts. Behind the scenes, there are constant enhancements to our technology infrastructure. It’s a job that never ends. Most importantly, we are investing in our people. More than products and technology, we find that people create our success and I am proud of each and every one of my officers, managers and employees. We are generating leadership and enthusiasm through our company’s “Core Values” which encourage security, passion, teamwork, and results. I am convinced that this initiative is the cornerstone of our future success.