Press Releases

Indianapolis, IN- Passageways, the leading provider of portal solutions to the financial industry organized another edition of its annual 3-day conference on Collaboration across the industry and within the Enterprise. This was the 5^th year for this growing conference which attracted over 150 attendees from across United States and Canada.  The event was held in downtown Indianapolis, in the Roof Ball Room.

The highlights of the conference included a riveting keynote address by Mark Meyer, CEO Filene Research Institute. This was an enlightening address highlighting some of the challenges and opportunities facing the Financial Services industry.

There was a presentation by the two co-founders of Passageways Paroon Chadha and Christopher Beltran on "Passageways : Today and Tomorrow",  setting the tone for the rest of the conference. This session highlighted the 7 industry awards Passageways  solutions won in the past year including multiple CU Journal Best Practices awards, Bank Technology news Best Practices award, BankNews Innovative solutions award,  Inc. 5000 and Indiana Companies to watch listing to name a few. This session also featured the release of a Verona, a community portal solution which is already fostering industry-wide collaboration networks across the financial services industry. In addition, Passageways also highlighted several enhancements to its flagship Employee Portal and Board Portal solutions.

This year's event also featured a panel discussion on "Current and anticipated trends in Collaboration and their impact on Business", moderated by Paroon Chadha. The panel attracted leaders from across the industry and made for an insightful discussion, enough to spark several tweets from the live audience, which were being projected, live to the audience in the auditorium and online on twitter.com.

The panel consisted of:

• Randy Karnes, CEO of CU*Answers
• Doug True, CTO and CLO, Forum Credit Union, Founder of the Filene i3 group
• Curtis Falk- Open Solutions Community portal Leader
• Kevin Roddy, CIO of 3rd Federal bank, Partner Chair of Open Solutions Client Association
• Mike Atkins, CEO of Open Technology Solutions
• Christopher Beltran, Co-Founder Passageways and Collaboration Visionary

The event also featured several presentations by various banks and credit unions competing for the annual best practices competition, which was judged, live by the audience. The awards for the 2010 edition of  PowWOW were won by:

• Best New Portal Implementation : United Communities Credit Union, Canada
• Best New Module : Sandia Laboratory Federal Credit Union, NM, (Employee Handbook) 
• Best Use of Portal for Streamlining Processes : Mutual 1^st Federal Credit Union, Omaha, NE, (Compliance Connections)          
• America's Best Portal Page Design : American Airlines Credit Union

America's Best Portal Page competition was organized online, and received a total of 44 entries. After two weeks of collecting these entries, online voting was open to the general public from May 5 through May 12, 2010.  The competition received an overwhelming response. Over 3900 people viewed the entries, and nearly 1600 votes were cast in 8 days, culminating on May 12, the awards night. 

 The conference also included several new product introductions including a Verona (Community Portal Platform), Sales Management Module, the next version of the Portal framework P4, version 4.6 and a sneak peek at the iPhone application for the Passageways portals.

Verona, the most significant product introduction is industry's first platform built for collaboration for groups of credit unions and community banks all working in private and secure membership based (Facebook-like) community portals. Passageways is already powering a community of 450 banks and credit unions  for Open Solutions Inc. and is currently planning a community for its own 200 clients and another community for CU*Answers , a Michigan based core processing CUSO serving more than 200 credit unions.

Passageways team also proudly presented checks of over $6,000 to two charitable organizations American Red Cross and Northwest Haiti Christian Mission. These contributions were raised by Passageways staff through online auctions for staff and customers running on Passageways portals across the country.

"This was a great confluence of industry's foremost thinkers around collaboration. Apart from rolling out new products, Passageways is proud to be the platform for transforming industry and enterprise knowledge into future success", say Paroon Chadha, Co-Founder Passageways.

"New products, new ideas, and a recharged team - it just does not get any better for our team. PowWOW 2010 was easily the most exciting event we have witnessed. Financial Industry is clearly focused on finding new efficiencies to drive down cost of business and finding new revenue sources and Passageways is focused on innovating at the speed of market demands", says Christopher Beltran, Co-Founder Passageways.

The evening also included a casino night and rock band which allowed all the participants to get meet each other and celebrate another exciting year for all Passageways clients and partners.

About Passageways

Passageways is an Indiana based provider of employee, board and community portal solutions for Credit Unions and community banks. Passageways helps over 200 organizations to collaborate and communicate more effectively using its software platforms. For more information please visit www.passageways.com

 

  

In picture L-R  Sarah Crowe (Customer Development, Passageways), Jennifer Huie (American Airlines Credit Union), Veronica Martinez (American Airlines Credit Union), Rashmi Bijai (Lead Consulting, Passageways), Carlos Galvan (American Airlines Credit Union), Anne Wertz (Customer Support, Passageways).

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana, 5/17/10

Passageways, the leading portal solutions provider for financial institutions, is proud to announce that American Airlines Federal Credit Union is the winner of Passageways' America's Best Portal Page Competition. This online competition was open to all organizations across any industry nationwide, inviting submissions for an image of an employee intranet page or a portal page. The competition was focused on creativity and uniqueness in design of a portal page, while creating a collaborative Web page for employee portals. The winner was to be awarded an Apple iPad, which certainly added to the competition frenzy.

This competition call-out received 44 submissions from the United States and Canada.   Online voting was open to the general public May 5-12. The competition received an overwhelming response, with more than 3,900 people viewing the entries, and nearly 1,600 votes were received in six working days!

 The winner was announced at a spectacular awards ceremony at Passageways' Annual PowWOW Conference in Indianapolis on May 12.  

The winning page was submitted by AA Credit Union in Fort Worth, TX.  Jennifer Huie, Veronica Martinez and Carlos Galvan were there to accept the award, a new Apple iPad. 

Senior Vice President, Gail Enda, expressed "I was thrilled to learn that our landing page won, given the high caliber of the other entries.  The collaborative nature of the design process ensured that our page is easy to use and relevant to our employees."

AA Credit Union's winning team has decided to auction off the iPad using the Auction module within their portal. The money raised will be used to support their "Helping Hands Family Fund", an internal charitable initiative that ensures no child is left without a smile on Christmas morning.

"Passageways is very encouraged at the overwhelming response to this competition. This was a win-win for us, as it allowed us to see how creative our customers are, and reward the most popular choice", says Sarah Crowe, Customer Development Manager at Passageways.

"We had so much fun doing this competition that we'll definitely do more such competitions regularly," Crowe added.

All entries can be viewed at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/PassagewaysPowwow/AmericaSBestPortalPageCompetition?feat=directlink#slideshow/5468148246633387970

A platform for all client collaboration and communication!

WEST LAFAYETTE, September 25, 2009 -- Passageways, a West Lafayette, Ind.-based portal solutions provider for financial services industry, and Open Solutions Inc. have jointly delivered a portal for Open's client community creating an "always on" community for Open Solutions' clients. This mark's an industry first, where a community of several hundred credit unions and banks from across the world are now a part of a dynamic community for connecting with information and their peers. Passageways was the chosen provider given its extensive experience in delivering collaboration portals for the financial services industry and the familiarity of several Open Solutions' clients with the portal platform.

This portal serves the ever growing need for clients to connect with each other and with Open's staff, using the portal to share their Open Solutions-related experiences and best practices. The solution was first piloted at a regional level and given its success, it was scaled for the entire Open client community. The portal is governed by Open's clients who can connect and collaborate at various levels including portal-wide, along product lines, among geographic regions and at a project level. At each of these levels, clients can share information including calendars, discussions, documents, agendas, best practices, and also get connected with other members of the client community without having to seek them out on LinkedIn or on Facebook.

The clients and Open Solutions team have also come up with a slew of Web 2.0 features that allow them to connect with various community members including twitter-like status updates, rich people profiles, organizational profiles, blogs and a Facebook-like wall. This community portal also allows users to filter the community in several ways and allows for easy searching across the portal community and content.

The clients have already shown excitement about this initiative with several messages and posts across various groups. In the first few weeks the portal has achieved a daily page view count of several hundred pages and regular new user signups. Open Solutions plans to bring on its entire client base in 2010, from 5200 client organizations.

"The Open Solutions Client Association portal has solved a relationship challenge by centralizing communications and correspondence not only with Open Solutions and our clients but equally important on a client peer-to-peer level," says Scott Starace, Sr. Director, Organization Readiness at Open Solutions. Starace adds, "Having gone live with the Client Association portal just over 30 days ago, we are quickly seeing benefits with the introduction of this social network of information and best practices provided by the clients, for the clients." 

Open Solutions employees participate at the portal as well. "Case avoidance is one of our goals," said Dennis Madson, Vice President Client Care. "If we can better enable clients through a community knowledgebase to be more self-sufficient and utilize our systems to their greatest capacity, it will reduce our case inflow. We also get a pulse on the client base at a very deep level as we hear from movers and shakers using our systems."

One of the Open clients, Kathy Houghtalen from Beacon Credit Union ($880M in assets, Indiana), said "This portal provides an invaluable resource to connect with people who are working on similar projects and relate to us right away. Information on things like which department and what skills are needed for working on a particular new project, can make a huge difference in the final outcome of the project and this portal allows us to gather such information freely." From Beacon Credit Union 10 employees are now plugged into this community regularly.

"We are excited about this great joint initiative and the progressive vision shown here. This client community is now in an ‘always on' mode and we are excited to facilitate and streamline information sharing through our platform," say Paroon Chadha, Co-Founder/VP, Passageways.

"This type of portal allows clients to capture the tribal wisdom for easy reference by other clients and the vendor. This wisdom can then be morphed into more structured product ideas, enhancements and best practices," adds Chadha.

This is potentially the largest portal initiatives undertaken in the credit union industry, given the wide participation and inherent flexibility of the project scope. This client community is powered by Passageways newest version P4 and also has several web 2.0 features needed for getting such communities to be social and vibrant. In just 6 weeks, already more than 300 clients (banks and credit unions) have become a part of this online community out of a total of 770 core clients that Open Solutions has. Eventually all Open solutions clients from United States, Canada and the rest of the world will be able to access this community portal.

This project is benefiting from several Open Solutions' clients who are already familiar with Passageways products and now acting as strong advocates for this exciting project at their regional levels.

"We see this as the general direction for all businesses in future," says Christopher Beltran, Co-Founder/VP, Passageways. "Passageways is happy to lead the next wave of innovation in collaboration and we have several new offerings slated for release in the next few months for such community portals," adds Beltran.

The Open Solutions Client Association Portal is the first of a string of client community portals that Passageways has currenly under wraps for the financial industry, suggested Christopher Beltran, Passageways co-founder and VP.

 

About Open Solutions Inc.

Open Solutions Inc. offers a fully-featured strategic information management product platform that integrates core processing applications built on a single centralized Oracle relational database, with Internet banking, cash management, CRM/business intelligence, financial accounting and management tools, profitability tools, wealth management, imaging, digital documents, interactive voice response, technology services, HSAs, payments and loan origination solutions. Open Solutions' full suite of products and services allows banks, thrifts, credit unions and financial services providers in the United States, Canada and internationally to better compete in today's aggressive financial services marketplace, and expand and tap their trusted financial relationships, client affinity, community presence and personalized service.

 

About Passageways

Founded in 2003, West Lafayette, Ind.-based Passageways is portal solution provider offering the financial services industry with portal products. Passageways has delivered 180 employee portals, over 50 board portals and several cross organization community portals in the financial industry.

The company's flagship product, Passageways Corporate Portal Framework, provides financial institutions with the ability to organize, manage and deliver role-based views and access to streamline communication, organize enterprise knowledge and automate business processes. For more information about Passageways, visit www.passageways.com.

###

 For More Information about this product, contact Paroon Chadha

 paroonatpassagewaysdotcom

 

Productivity and Conservation brought in the limelight

 

West Lafayette, IN. May 7th, 2009 - Passageways, a West Lafayette, Indiana Based Portal solution software provider was joined by over 100 attendees from nearly 50 Financial Institutions for their fifth annual users conference at the Embassy Suites and Indiana Rooftop Ballroom in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

 

The conference was started off on an engaging note by Key Note Speakers- Ron Nice, Rich Scholes, and Daniel Nice from the strategic planning group Nice Enterprises, where they explored market trends and the changing technological landscape. Another notable session was given by Gail Koehler and Samantha Merritt of Purdue Employees Federal Credit Union  

Picture: Passageways Co-Founders, Paroon Chadha and Christopher Beltran address the 5^th annual User conference

This year's conference fused fun with the informative sessions by providing a night of entertainment including national touring comedians Moody McCarthy and Marty Polio joined with Mukund Ramachandran for a very funny opening gala. After the comedians there was a Rock Band video game and karaoke competition. 

Again this year, Passageways' clients participated in a best practice competition, where their peers vote on the best practice in five categories. The 2009 winners are:

1. Best use of Portal to Streamline a Process
1. Fort Sill National Bank, for Streamlining the internal Job Application Process
2. Best Implementation
1. Pacific Continental Bank
3. Best New Module and Tie-in W/3^rd Party
1. Bank of American Fork, for Product and Services Tie-In
4. Best New Module with Consulting
1. Purdue Employees Federal Credit Union for their Sales and Service Module
5. Other Notable Entries include:
1. American Airlines Credit Union
2. Beacon Credit Union
3. Northrup Grumman FCU
4. Alliant Credit Union
5. Belco Credit Union
6. CU*Answers
7. City National Bank
8. Eli Lilly Credit Union

 

The conference was also the chosen platform for launching the new Portal Certification Program. The Portal Certification program was developed to help test and formally acknowledge the ability of both Portal Administrators (Passageways Certified Portal Administrators) and Workgroup Managers (Passageways Certified Workgroup Managers). Passageways' will continue to develop and host more certification courses, as they received very positive reviews, and were well attended. The first batch included over 30 successful certifications being awarded.

 

Co-Founders Christopher Beltran and Paroon Chadha also delivered a look into the future of Passageways by delivering several sessions looking at future functionality and technology of the Portal, including the introduction several future initiatives such as Verona, Portal Gurus etc.

Also featured at this year's conference was the How To? Help Lounge, where customers could interact with staff and each other on new projects and ideas. Some of the products that were causing the most Buzz in the Help Lounge were the new Lobby Management Application, which helps track service at branches, Knowledge Management which Organizes Policies, Procedures, Product Information, Documents, and FAQs in a knowledgebase, and, the Board Portal, which is a delivery channel for boards to access secure Packets, Announcements, and Key information online.

 

"We are very satisfied with the conference outcome, as were PowWOW attendees.  Over 80% of the attendees ranked their PowWOW experience either a 9 or 10 (on a scale of 1-10). The new ideas everyone shared and discussed is truly a testament to the entire Passageways community!" said Christopher Beltran, Co-Founder Passageways. 

 

About Passageways

Passageways LLC is the leading portal provider to the financial industry. Passageways' mission is to provide an affordable portal strategy for banks and credit unions of all sizes, helping their employees and partners become more efficient in Communication and business processes, while organizing Enterprise Knowledge. The company is headquartered in West Lafayette, Ind. For more information, visit http://www.passageways.com/ or please call (765) 497 8832.

Plans for Client Conference PowWOW 2009

West Lafayette, IN. March 10th, 2009 - Passageways, Indiana based portal solutions provider for financial institutions, has signed up several new portal customers already this year. Besides new clients, Passageways is also reporting several new module sales to its growing list of clients. The recently signed customers from this year include:

1. Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, NY - $2.4B in assets (Employee and Board Portal)

2. Sunwest Federal Credit Union, AZ - $251M in assets (Employee Portal)

3. Penn State Credit Union, PA - $111M in assets (Employee Portal)

4. Telcom Credit Union, MI - $451M in assets (Employee Portal)

5. Canyon National Bank, CA - $300M in assets (Employee Portal)

6. Abound Resources, TX (Employee and Extranet Portal)

7. Global Credit Union, WA - $365M in assets (Board Portal)

8. Mazuma Credit Union, MO - $355M in assets (Board Portal)

Besides this, Passageways Products have also found favor with existing clients for several modules this year, including:

1. Brightstar Credit Union - Invoice Approval and Purchase Order Management

2. Credit Union West - Lobby Management Application

3. Our Community Credit Union - Assigned Tasks Module

4. Forum Credit Union - Products and Services Module

5. Credit Union of America -Dashboard Creator Module

6. Community Educators Credit Union - Statement/ Document Research Applications

7. Five Point Credit Union - Custom Portal Landing page

8. Deere Credit Union - Custom Portal Landing page

9. Purdue Employee Federal Credit Union - Learning Management Application

10. Jeanne D'arc - Test taker Application

11. State Department Federal Credit Union - Help Desk Module

12. Mid-Atlantic Corporate Credit Union - Read receipt for Compliance Application

"Passageways is benefiting from the renewed value everyone is attaching to increasing employee productivity" said Christopher Beltran Co-Founder and VP, Passageways.  "Our goals for 2009 includes reaching the 200-client milestone, but this year will truly be our year to produce solutions allowing collaboration between employees, directors, partners and vendors in new ways, leading to greater productivity", adds Beltran.

Passageways' PowWOW Advanced User and Developer Conference is scheduled for April 29^th - May 1^st in Indianapolis. More information about the conference is available at http://www.passageways.com/powwow.php

The highlights of this upcoming conference include a list of well known guest speakers including Ron Nice, Rich Scholes and Daniel Nice. Besides this, the conference will also feature the comedic entertainment by Moody McCarthy and Marty Polio. The blog for this event is available at:

http://info.passageways.com/bid/7772/Let-s-Hear-it-for-PowWOW-2009

Passageways encourages a strong connection with their team to turn ideas into exciting new products and services.  It has built internal processes to share ideas and best practices with customers allowing them to utilize Passageways solutions to their fullest potential.  This is reflected in Passageways' product development, project management process and implementations. In addition, Passageways provides training and support programs, continuing education programs and of course the annual client conference PowWOW is at the heart of this strategy.

About Passageways

Passageways specializes in providing corporate portal solutions for financial institutions connecting their employees, directors, partners and vendors. Passageways solutions are used to streamline communications, increase collaboration and automate internal processes by replacing traditional intranet solutions.  Passageway supports nearly 200 banks and credit unions portals including several dozen board portals and a number of industry wide community portals, making it a leader in collaboration solutions in the financial services industry. Passageways offers a portal framework that enables financial institutions to collaboratively organize and manage documents, processes, internal Web content and other corporate knowledge bases using its several modules.