AUSTIN, TEXAS—February 2, 2012— CoreTrac, Inc. continues to raise the bar in providing CRM/Sales Force Automation (SFA) software to community financial institutions that want to enhance their sales and service culture. CoreTrac, Inc., provider of ResourceOne and LINK, the easy-to-use and affordable CRM/Sales Force Automation (SFA) solutions, announced today the addition of Shell FCU in Deer Park, TX ($453M assets, OSI core) to their expanding customer base.

Shell FCU was chartered in February 1937 to provide financial services to its original forty members inside the Shell Deer Park plant. Seventy-five years later, Shell FCU’s membership includes anyone who lives, works or attends school in Harris County, Texas. The sole purpose of Shell FCU is to meet the financial needs of members, provide free financial literacy and volunteer for a stronger community.

Jose Rodriguez, CEO of Shell FCU, said, “As we continue to grow and provide sound financial services to the people in our community, we felt CoreTrac’s ResourceOne was the best fit to help us achieve our vision of exceptional member service by providing value to our members each day to help them improve their financial situations.”

“Long-term member retention is critical for a financial institution’s success. Credit unions like Shell FCU that focus on providing a personal touch while understanding and meeting their individual member’s financial needs find real value in ResourceOne’s tailor-made ability to get that job done, and gain optimum performance results, institution wide, on a day-to-day basis.” says Alan Buhler, Executive Vice President at CoreTrac, Inc.

CoreTrac, Inc. is a privately held corporation with its headquarters in Austin, Texas. The company is dedicated exclusively to providing its easy-to-use and affordable CRM/Sales Force Automation solutions, ResourceOne and LINK, to community financial institutions. The ResourceOne solution delivers the power to manage opportunities through:

• Lead and referral tracking
• Contact and pipeline management
• Next-best product cross-sell recommendation
• Profitability tracking
• Service Center case management
• Up-to-date marketing campaigns
• Employee incentive, compensation, and goal performance tracking
• On-demand, comprehensive management Reports

For more information about CoreTrac, Inc., ResourceOne and LINK, please visit www.coretrac.com or contact Alan Buhler at 512-236-9120 ext. 272 or abuhler@CoreTrac.com.

AUSTIN, TEXAS—January 3, 2012— CoreTrac, Inc., provider of ResourceOne and LINK, the easy-to-use and affordable CRM/Sales Force Automation (SFA) solutions, announced today that Aero FCU in Glendale, AZ ($192M assets, OSI core) has chosen CoreTrac’s ResourceOne as its CRM/SFA solution to enhance sales, marketing and member service effectiveness.

Since 1957, Aero FCU was founded under the concept of people helping people. With more than 18,000 members and counting, Aero FCU is committed to delivering the very best financial services to their members.

Preston Sanders, CEO at Aero FCU says, “We are looking forward to 2012 and the introduction of CoreTrac’s ResourceOne into our culture. We wanted to find a system that was in sync with our strong focus on service culture and member relationships. An easy-to-use, but powerful CRM/sales tracking technology is vital to achieving our business objectives of growth and member satisfaction. CoreTrac’s ResourceOne has a proven track record of enabling community financial institutions like ours deliver on business objectives, growth ambitions, and excellent service to our members.”

Alan Buhler, Executive Vice President at CoreTrac, Inc. states, “CoreTrac’s ResourceOne can help solve a financial institution’s sales tracking and contact management challenges, and really bring accountability to the table. We are thrilled to have Aero FCU choose CoreTrac’s ResourceOne, and are strongly committed to providing the best relationship management and sales automation tools for Aero FCU to make rapid progress on its path to achieving its growth and service objectives.”

CoreTrac, Inc. is a privately held corporation with its headquarters in Austin, Texas. The company is dedicated exclusively to providing its easy-to-use and affordable CRM/Sales Force Automation solutions, ResourceOne and LINK, to community financial institutions. The ResourceOne solution delivers the power to manage opportunities through:
• Lead and referral tracking
• Contact and pipeline management
• Next-best product cross-sell recommendation
• Profitability tracking
• Service Center case management
• Up-to-date marketing campaigns
• Employee incentive, compensation, and goal performance tracking
• On-demand, comprehensive management Reports

For more information about CoreTrac, Inc., ResourceOne and LINK, please visit www.coretrac.com or contact Alan Buhler at 512-236-9120 ext. 272 or abuhler@CoreTrac.com.

By: Alan Buhler

There is no question that a small number of your customers/members provide most of your institution’s profits—you know this, I know this, we all now this! Unfortunately, the efforts to recognize this important client segment is rarely consistently implemented, and even more seldom is a comprehensive plan developed that is intended to consistently retain this extremely important group of clients.

First, let me iterate that there needs to be an easily understood and workable definition of what a “best customer” is. It really doesn’t matter whether you use total balances, total profitability, or a combination of the two to define your selection of customers/members that fall into the “best clients” category. What is important is that the definition has credibility in the whole organization and that all the information available is being leveraged to the greatest extent possible. These customers/members can be easily identified by applying the defined business rules to a marketing list in CoreTrac’s ResourceOne (R1).

Once identified, the objective is to maintain a running dialogue with these special customers/members to keep them engaged. For example, branch managers can use the list of their top customers/members and make an effort to get to know them personally, schedule calls, in-person meetings, etc. In study after study, the main complaint by customers is an attitude of indifference toward them by their financial institution—these “touches” are the simplest way to put that complaint on the sideline. In addition, this process can be automated in R1 so that none of the “best clients” are overlooked, and you have complete track-ability and reporting.

If you can add a regular communication program done over your CEO’s signature, it will acknowledge the special role these clients play. Also, let them be the first to know about special offers, new branch openings, etc. You may even consider hosting occasional social events to reinforce the personal relationships that can be developed between your customer/member and their personal banker. Finally, and at the bare minimum, a targeted “thank you” message during the holiday season is always appropriate.

Alan Buhler is Executive Vice President at CoreTrac, Inc. He can be reached at abuhler@CoreTrac.com
or (512) 236-9120 ext. 272

By: Alan Buhler

With the emerging popularity of social media, and the trend to implement and utilize social media tools, some in the banking industry have started believing that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ can replace CRM/SFA tools. Well, if you believe that, I highly recommend reconsidering.

Social media sites like Facebook compliments, but does not replace, an integrated CRM/Sales Force Automation system. CRM/SFA allows bankers to do many things that are simply not possible using Facebook or the other social media outlets. For example, creating activity plans or marketing campaigns and assigning them to specific employees, receiving automatic prompts when it’s time to get in touch, or keeping a detailed contact history. And then of course there’s the whole area of active business opportunities. I’m not aware of any way to manage active customers/members, and all the associated tasks, appointments, and next-best product recommendations related to each, in Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Facebook, for example, is great in that it allows you to have interactive communication with contacts. A CRM/SFA system doesn’t allow for this. That being said, Facebook alone does not provide most of the functionality bankers require in order to build a business based on returning clients and referrals. The fact is, financial institutions need to make certain they have a complete understanding of the total (and potential) relationship they have with everyone in their database or sphere of influence, not just those they’re “friends” with on Facebook. I’m not saying that Google+, Facebook and whatever the next social thing is aren’t useful for business. They are. They’re great ways to communicate with people, and great ways to listen to people. But, while it may be tempting to label them as such, social networking sites are not client relationship management tools, simply because they lack any sort of direct business intent or business process system. Social networking sites are no more CRM/SFA platforms than that old paper Rolodex (and maybe even less so).

Social networking sites have lots of data about customers/members. This surplus of data is what makes it tempting to say that social networking sites can be functional CRM systems. Social networking sites also have some information about the relationship between customers and the organization. However, the meaningfulness of that relationship data is relatively low.

Social networking sites start to fall down at the relationship level, but they become nearly useless at the management level. Many financial institutions see CRM/SFA as a strategy, not so much a tool. The strategy typically is a process for generating market penetration, wallet share, and client satisfaction. CRM/SFA tools exist to help codify your business process for generating market penetration, wallet share, and client satisfaction. This is the management part of the software. Social networking sites are not very good at this at all. Social networking sites may be the means through which you deliver a satisfying experience, but the actual process for generating satisfaction is not inherent in any of the social networking sites. The lack of any sort of baked-in business process is what keeps social networking sites from being useful CRM tools.

Alan Buhler is Executive Vice President at CoreTrac, Inc. He can be reached at abuhler@CoreTrac.com
or (512) 236-9120 ext. 272