COCC COMPLETES CLIENT MIGRATION TO OPEN CORE PLATFORM

AVON, Conn., Jan. 26, 2004 – COCC, a leading provider of technology for community financial institutions, has completed the migration of its entire client base of 97 institutions from a mainframe core processing application to an Oracle®-based Client/Server platform. Moving to the open processing platform earned COCC a “lifetime achievement” award from Phoenix-based Cornerstone Advisors, who claimed they had “never witnessed the successful wholesale migration of such a large client base in only a few short years.”

COCC’s migration effort began in 1997 when the company decided to replace its NCR mainframe core system with a client/server, open platform. After surveying the industry, COCC selected the Open Solutions software package, which was built on the Oracle® database structure, making it the most open platform available.

“Software selection was the easiest step,” said Steve Williams of Cornerstone Advisors. “One of COCC’s biggest challenges was to develop a migration plan to easily move more than 90 financial institutions with minimal disruption.”

 Williams explained that migrating off a mainframe system is a different animal than going from mainframe to mainframe. Financial institutions have to change their orientation from accounts to customers and expand their understanding of relationships. They have to “burn their lists of codes” and trust the system to present options in English. They also have the option of developing more efficient procedures because the system offers additional flexibility throughout the entire institution.

Supporting these changes meant re-training client staff, creating new documentation and developing new migration procedures at COCC. The company’s customer service and programming departments expanded to accommodate these efforts. Special talent was hired to help clients re-engineer their operations to take maximum advantage of the system changes. “We had never seen a data center of COCC’s size accomplish those tasks,” said Williams. “But COCC got it all done and earned its clients’ praise.”

 “COCC’s migration effort involved everyone in the company and just about everyone at our client institutions,” said COCC’s president and CEO, Richard A. Leone. “Going from a mainframe, flat file platform to a PC-based relational platform stimulated positive changes in our clients’ business cultures that resulted in significant increases in productivity. This is why next generation technology occupies such an important role in our clients’ success going forward.”

Several COCC clients say that the new core system, called INSIGHT, is a significant factor in their growth and profitability. Rheo A. Brouillard, president and CEO of The Savings Institute, a $511M savings bank located in Willimantic, Connecticut, said, “A key component in our growth strategy was improvements to our service infrastructure.  Converting to COCC’s INSIGHT platform gave us the state-of-the-art technology we needed to raise brand recognition while keeping costs in line.” 

Since converting to INSIGHT, The Savings Institute has increased its commercial loan portfolio, expanded its branch network, and nearly doubled the number of ATMs available to the public from 18 to 30 machines.  In the first two years following conversion, bank assets grew 34 percent.

According to Elizabeth P. Jones, president and CEO of Everett Cooperative Bank, “COCC enabled us to position ourselves as a community bank with big bank products – a tribute to the flexibility and adaptability of COCC’s INSIGHT system.”  The Everett bank has grown 47 percent in three years and, during this time, improved its efficiency ratio from 71.0 percent to 51.61 percent.

Beyond the benefits to client core operations, COCC’s open platform architecture helped the company integrate a new generation of ancillary systems into the core offering. Integrated into the INSIGHT core platform are eFunds electronic banking, Oracle®Financials, AFS check imaging, Baker Hill commercial client management, and more.  COCC offers and supports the majority of its ancillary components as centralized solutions to minimize cost and maximize utility.

“No other company offers a platform with this level of utility and sophistication, and none have migrated their entire client base to it,” said Leone.  “COCC has taken its client institutions to the next level of technology and support — a step that many financial institutions will find necessary to meet business demands.”