Client Success Stories

NewportFed Reins in Costs with Oracle Financials from COCC

A banker might safely assume that doubling assets in a mere four years would justify an increase in accounting staff. Not at NewportFed, a $345M savings bank located in Newport, Rhode Island where the accounting department actually shrank by 25% thanks to Oracle Financials from COCC.

“Our bank adopted a holding company structure, went public, acquired another institution and expanded its product line,” said Marie Cox, Vice President and Controller at NewportFed. “Yet Oracle Financials enabled us to dramatically reduce the labor involved in our accounting procedures. For example, we reduced our month end closing procedures from two full days to just half a day. That level of labor reduction has been our experience every step of the way.”

COCC, a data processing service located in Avon, Connecticut, has offered a complete Financial Suite, which includes the Oracle Financial applications, as part of its information technology services to banks and credit unions since 2001. The company is the largest provider of Oracle Financial applications in the world outside of Oracle Corporation itself.

The Oracle Financials package utilized by NewportFed provides state-of-the-art General Ledger, Fixed Assets and Accounts Payable modules directly accessible via Excel. “There are no uploads or downloads with this system,” said Linda Stahl, Director – Strategic Products at COCC. “Bank accountants use Excel to review and update their financial information in Oracle.”

The use of Excel to access accounting functions is a major step forward. Most accountants consider Excel to be their “home” software, using it to perform financial analysis, chart the results, and produce finished reports for management and the board.

COCC’s Excel-Oracle connection, called Application Desktop Integrator, enables bankers to use the software they know best to gain access to enterprise-wide financial information.

Ms. Cox said that the bank’s custom reports produced in Oracle Financials are automatically available in Excel without downloading or waiting. “The information is just there,” she said. “This has enabled us to match our financials with our daily activity so we can reconcile in record time.”

The process works in reverse as well, when accruals and amortization figures need to be entered into the Oracle Financials system at month-end. “One of our reports automatically compares the current month against the last, identifying variances and producing the appropriate entries for review and posting,” said Ms. Cox. “It’s a tremendous time-saver.”

NewportFed saves additional time by comparing totals from the bank’s loan and deposit portfolios to the figures hitting the general ledger. “This feature lets us reconcile the bank and holding company within minutes each day rather than one hour each day,” said Ms. Cox.

The bank also uses Oracle Financials to deliver relevant financial reports to each department. Ms. Cox’s staff schedules the reports for production and delivery every morning, ensuring that every department automatically has the financial information it needs.
“The system gives us plenty of room to grow,” said Ms. Cox. “Oracle Financials was designed for complex, multi-national companies, so it handles every one of our business expansions with ease. I can honestly say it is very unlikely that we will ever outgrow Oracle Financials.”