Colo on the Down-low

I took a trip to our collocation facility last week. It was the first time I have been there since signing the deal late last year. Yes, I signed the contract sight-unseen, probably not the best of ideas but I relied on my education and experience, along with a gut instinct, to get comfortable with it. And, I was not disappointed.

Last year, we visited three other colo's which gave me a good idea as to how they compare and things to look for. All colo's are definitely not created equal. The one we settled on, and visited last week, is very impressive. It's in a very non-descript building in the middle of an industrial park south of Seattle. From the outside, you would never guess what's inside. It is, by far, the biggest data center I have ever seen in my life. Just rows upon rows of racks with more servers, network and telecom gear than you can imagine. And the critical systems to support all that was really impressive, from the power plant to the refrigeration plant, everything appeared top-notch.

While at the facility, we received our picture ID, proximity badge, and got fingerprinted. You need both the badge and valid fingerprint to move around the facility. We also took a tour of the entire plant and saw just how seriously these folks take their business.

One of the nice takeaways from the visit was the recognition how much we do right in our own datacenter. We are doing so much of what these "big boys" are doing but, obviously, at a much smaller scale. We definitely could do a better job of capacity planning and redundancy, however. For instance, they make sure every critical system has enough capacity where they can suffer a failure and keep running. They have an extra generator, extra battery backup, and extra cooling, among other things. So, we've got some work to do but, in the meantime, we can take some comfort in knowing we're partnering with such a first-class data center.

Cascading Messages

I was reminded today why I'm a fan of cascading messages. Let me explain.

Cascading messages are basically messages that cascade through an organization, from the top down, through managers to their direct reports. While I'm also a big believer in transparency, I also believe there's a time and place for controlling a message. Sometimes it's really important to be deliberate in what you say.

I learned today that someone at my Credit Union forwarded an "all employee" email message from our CEO, to a newspaper reporter outside the organization. The message from our CEO was important and employees needed to hear it. But should anyone have a reasonable expectation that such "blast" emails would never leave the organization? When the CEO of IBM sends something like that out to every employee, does he really believe the email will, in all cases, stay "in the family?" I'm guessing not.

So, it seems to me, there are several ways to avoid this situation. One way is to avoid using email and go instead to a cascading message. The CEO tells the VP's who tell the Directors who tell the Managers and so on. Confidentiality is stressed all along the way and each person who receives the message feels a responsibility to their own Supervisor to maintain it.

Isn't there some old saying about never writing something in an email you wouldn't want your grandmother to read? Or something... Anyway, the point is, you should probably not have any expectation of privacy or confidentiality with email, especially when that expectation is not specifically called-out in the message.

Now, all that being said, I think whoever did this showed poor judgement. I don't know any of the circumstances around it so don't know the reasoning behind this person's actions so, on the surface, it certainly looks like bad judgement. But still, I personally wouldn't trust that 250 people would all exercise similarly good judgement. That's a stretch.

Ombudsman

I like the whole cooperative nature of Credit Unions. Something just seems right about it. I don't consider myself to be naive and I understand how big-time Credit Unions are a part of a big-time industry. Movement? Forget about it. Industry? More like it.

Still, I would like to see my own Credit Union get closer to our member-owners, be more transparent, and better maintain the spirit of a financial cooperative. It's one of the reasons I really welcome any discussion I can have with our members around their experiences and interactions with our organization. Again, not to sound too idealistic but, this is their Credit Union. They own the place.

So who's really looking out for the best interest of our membership? In theory, the Board of Directors represents the membership. I question how well that plays out in reality. Just how accessible are the Board Members to our members? Do they seek-out their input? Ask for feedback? I just don't get the sense they do.

I was reminded this morning how it's common for big city newspapers to have an Ombudsman. An individual that really represents the "folks" (as Bill O'Reilly would say.) So I started thinking about how something like this might work for a Credit Union. If ever a member wanted to talk about their own Credit Union experience, or make sure the Board or Management hears a certain message, they could setup an appointment to tell their story to the Credit Union Ombudsman.

I'm not thinking this would be a full time job but, nonetheless, it would be a real position within the Credit Union and everyone would know who the initial member-owner advocate is. Maybe it would be a Board member? Maybe the Internal Auditor? Maybe someone from the Supervisory Committee? Am I nuts? Is this just more crazy talk? Anyway...I like the concept and it would go a long way to promote the type of real transparency I like so much.

Is This Crazy Talk?

You know, I love to read Bob Lewis. But this post is "out there." Or is it? What do you think?

Read the comments on Bob's blog to find out what I think.

More on Mobile

We've been continuing to work with Access Softek on our mobile presence. These guys are great to work with. Sure it's self serving on their part but they went ahead and put up a test Mobile Banking site for us so we could start trying it out. They really make it easy to do business with them. And they've got a pretty solid product as well.

Because we've already installed an OFX server in 2008 so our members could use "direct connect" with Quicken and Money, we already have the infrastructure in place for their Mobile Banking product. In other words, we've already incurred the big expense (see previous post as to why that's so important today.)

So now I see we have a huge opportunity to make a big Mobile Banking splash in our area at a time when no local Credit Union is going to have the ability to bring their own product to market due to the traditional expense involved. How great would it be for my Credit Union to really play-up this important new service, being first to market in our area, and getting one-up on our competition? Let me answer that; it would be great!! Now I've got to deliver...

Credit Union Bailout

The big story over the last week and a half has been the proposed bailout of the corporate credit union system by the NCUA. There's a whole host of places I could take this post regarding this topic but I'm going to endeavor to stay on technology. What's the bailout mean to a technologist? What's it mean to me - the one ultimately responsible for the technology at my Credit Union?

Back in November I was asked by Kevin Jepson at the Credit Union Journal for my "wish list" of technology projects for 2009. I gave him the list which included many of the items I submitted for budget approval. Yeah, times are tough and the economy in Oregon is suffering right along (maybe even worse) with the national economy so I felt pretty fortunate that most of my requests were approved. A couple of the projects had to be scaled back but still, most everything was approved. Again, I felt pretty fortunate.

Fast forward two months and now this. The corporate bailout, as it stands, will mean a $5M hit for our Credit Union in 2009 which will immediately put us in the red; a hole we will not be able to clime out of for the remainder of the year. And so, to lessen the effects, all our technology projects for the year have been put back on the table. While that's pretty bad, my hope is that it doesn't get worse. My hope is that we aren't forced into staffing cuts as well. Any way you look at it, there's just no way to make up $5M in one year and still stay in business. At some point, you have to just cut into capital reserves and do the best you can.

Drastic expense reductions can be a tricky issue. For sure, there exists some low hanging fruit. The easiest thing to do is cut through the new projects for 2009 that either haven't had a chance to get off the ground yet or aren't a part of some other, larger initiative that's already moving forward. There's also the projects we're doing for regulatory reasons...that's tricky too. Past the capital expenditures, you start to get into operational expenses. Here too, some things are easy. We put an immediate freeze on education, training, and travel expenses. We can cut things like association dues and other subscriptions. Tougher to cut are things like software maintenance and other long-term contracts. And, unfortunately, those involve the lion's share of our expenses.

However tough we thought 2009 was going to be, things just got a lot tougher! People around me keep saying, "we'll get through this." I wonder...what does that even mean?

Mobile Presence

We've just finished implementing a quick, little mobile website. From your mobile browser, go to http://selcoccu.mobi.
For years we've been talking about creating a version of our website that was formatted for mobile browsers but, the more I thought about it, the more that just didn't make sense. Members just don't need all that information when they're on the go. So the answer is in a scaled-down version that members can use quickly to get to the important information they need.
Our new mobile presence allows members to find things like branch locations, hours of operation, contact information, ATM locations, and even a cool little search feature that will allow you to find no surcharge ATM's anywhere in the country. Oh yeah, and all the location information maps back to Google Maps! Pretty cool.
We haven't publicized the new mobile site yet so we're just going to sit back for a little while and see if anyone finds it. Just a week or so. The next step will be to start redirecting mobile browsers that hit our main site. That will be a good indicator of how much our membership is currently using mobile browsers to browse our website. We can track all the usage statistics on the back-end. Lastly, we'll make a big marketing push to see if we can attract members.
At some point in 2009, we'll add mobile banking to the site! That's when I think we'll really see folks get excited. I know I will be!