The CEO of a mid-western credit union told me a story about what happened when they launched their mobile banking system. The vendor they chose to develop the system looked great on paper, promising a long list of features and benefits. But after a few months, the mobile banking system stopped working.
In an ultra-competitive market, where the front lines of combat take place with technology, vendor performance is more important to credit unions and community banks than ever. If, for example, your mobile banking system isn’t working, your members or customers don’t blame your vendor, they blame you. Your vendor’s poor performance (e.g., uptime) affects how your service is perceived and, done badly, can cost business you worked hard to get.
Every credit union and community bank has a strategy to provide services through technology like mobile banking, and that strategic imperative is ever increasing. Managing your vendors’ performance should be one of your highest priorities, and it needs to go beyond just fixing major problems to avoiding death by a thousand cuts.
Compliance is important and something you have to do, but compliance can lead you down a rabbit hole of, “How much is enough?” Compliance can become a never-ending quest to check one more thing, make sure another task is completed, or spend more time and money for deeper dives and continuing activities to avoid the examiner bogeyman. It can continue forever, and so can the cost. Compliance becomes the tail wagging the dog.
A vendor management system that focuses on vendor planning, choosing the right vendor, contracting for performance, and measuring the performance is one that can make a huge impact on how your credit union or bank will perform in a highly competitive market. Maple Street has developed such a system. It’s our Vendor Advantage System® and it’s a game changer for managing vendors. In fact, the Vendor Advantage System® is the only complete and comprehensive vendor management system in the industry. Powered by VAS®, Maple Street experts will make certain you choose the right vendor, get the right contract, plan how your vendors will help you to reach long and shorter goals and, only Maple Street actually measures vendor performance to insure you get what you paid for.
The Vendor Advantage System® is designed to shift the vendor paradigm at a time when the entire credit union and community banking industry has to think differently about what to expect from vendors and what it means for performance. Real world results are amazing. VAS® has been proven to reduce vendor expenses. We’ve saved our clients more than $100 million and that number climbs higher daily. If you’d like to find out more about The Vendor Advantage System® give us a call at 800-513-6839.
The Maple Street Team