Fred Cook Enables Growth at North Shore Credit Union

Elite 8 honoree Fred Cook has helped establish North Shore Credit Union's IT organization as a major enabler for the business as it experiences tremendous growth and high retention levels.
When he isn't in a meeting, North Shore Credit Union (NSCU) CIO Fred Cook's office is rarely quiet -- not with the sounds of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other jazz musicians percolating in the background. "I tend to play a lot of music in the background when I'm by myself in my office," Cook relates. "That definitely is a good stress release."

But it wasn't always that way for the former music major. There was a time when music was a source of anxiety.

Before Cook stepped into the CIO role at NSCU in late 2003, as part of the interview process the North Vancouver, B.C.-based financial institution asked him about stress in IT and the business world. Cook, a percussionist, drew on his experience in the music world: Stress, he told the two interviewers, is playing in an orchestra when your only responsibility is playing the triangle for eight measures at bar 428 of a piece of music but losing your place at bar 200.

"You've got about two minutes to figure out where you are before you have to hit this piece of metal that has to pierce through the orchestra," Cook says. "If you're wrong, it's not that anybody is going to die or anything like that -- it's just that 80 people in the orchestra are going to think you're an idiot because you can't count, the conductor is going to give you dagger eyes because you just ruined his piece and about half the people in the audience ... will say, 'I don't remember that triangle being there.' Now that's stress."

It has been a long time since Cook gripped a triangle or a pair of drumsticks at the back of an orchestra. And yet, he says, music has been instrumental for him as he's helped lead NSCU's technology organization during a time of tremendous growth and transformation. "That's how I've been able to multitask," he notes with a chuckle. "I've applied some of those disciplines I learned and had to execute as a music major to the business world."

Indeed, multitasking has been a key talent for Cook in his time at NSCU. In his five years at the financial institution, Cook has established the IT team as a partner of the business and key supporter of the credit union's goals, which have been far ranging: from growth and customer retention to competitive differentiation in a saturated marketplace and improved customer experience.

So far Cook has performed like a maestro. In part because of its advancing technology capabilities, NSCU has seen a dramatic increase in revenue (up 41 percent) and profitability (up 40 percent), according to one of the credit union's vendor partners. Cook credits those gains to a larger corporate strategy put in place by NSCU president and CEO Chris Catliff, who joined the company in 2000.

At the time, Cook estimates, the company had a membership of approximately 40,000 people and assets of about US$552 million. Now it has $1.8 billion in assets, though its membership still hovers around 40,000. "We've been able to do a much better job of targeting those who make the most sense for us on profitability," Cook points out.

Developing Intimate Relationships

Perhaps no technology has contributed as much to the credit union's recent growth as a Pivotal CRM system from CDC Software (North American headquarters in Atlanta). North Shore has been using the customer relationship management (CRM) technology for nearly a decade but subsequent upgrades made during Cook's tenure represent major strategic shifts for the credit union.

Previously, Cook says, the institution took a mass market, everything-to-everyone approach to its customer base. Recently, however, it has shifted to a more boutique approach in which it seeks to deliver certain sets of services to certain customer segments. According to Cook, the new CRM system, along with a business intelligence (BI) warehouse, has helped NSCU deliver on the new strategic approach, which requires it to identify those segments and manage multiple relationships. "We segment like crazy, in terms of targeting and ensuring that we're dealing with the right member with the right products at the right time," Cook says.

The Pivotal implementation changes how NSCU views the CRM function, Cook adds. Previously seen as a sales campaign tracking function, it's now used as an experience management tool, he says, that is leveraged throughout the organization.

The new CRM system, Cook continues, has given NSCU employees better access to more customer information, allowing them to provide a more intimate experience to the credit union's membership. For instance, the CRM system includes pictures of members, so branch employees don't have to repeatedly ask members for identification. "How can you be 'member intimate' if you're always pressing people for identification?" Cook notes, referring to the NSCU's "member intimacy" corporate strategy. "Just by changing the CRM screen at the point where the tellers work, it reinforces what we're trying to get across about how we deliver a different value experience."

In describing the importance of CRM to his company's technology environment, Cook suggests that, while a core banking system is a financial institution's main engine, it is not a relationship engine per se. "Our CRM system is the first thing that sits in front of everybody. It doesn't matter if you are on the front line or the back line -- you start and end your day going through our CRM system," he says.

With the enhanced CRM system in place, though, Cook and NSCU are now focused on that main engine. In the first quarter of 2007, it selected a Temenos (Geneva, Switzerland) T24 enterprise core banking platform. Implementation began in April 2007 and the new system, which will run in a Windows and SQL environment, is set to go live in October 2009.

The Elite 8 2009

Cook says the Temenos system was chosen in part for the vendor's global perspective. "Being a retail bank, we look at the opportunity to cherry-pick and leverage some of those [pockets of] vertical knowledge to better support our strategy to deliver on those higher advisory services," he explains.

Equally important is the new system's ability to integrate withNSCU's enterprise content management (ECM) platform, BI warehouse and CRM system, Cook adds. In addition, he expects that the Temenos system will provide the institution with a rapid product development engine, without requiring a lot of in-house programming.

Essentially, Cook believes, the new system was a prerequisite as the credit union looks to stay competitive going forward. "We're in a very competitive marketplace. Canadian credit unions ... are like community banks [in the U.S.]," he says. "We cooperate with peer credit unions in joint business ventures and things like that, but when it comes to the retail street level we can go after each other's business."