BROOKFIELD, Wis. – Integrating a credit decision engine into CUSA Technologies' core processing system is one of the projects that Fiserv Inc. is citing as an initial accomplishment in a companywide initiative to blend the far-flung enterprise's technological capacities. Fiserv has more than 60 integration projects under way, and says it intends to integrate "significant portions of the company's products by the end of 2005," according to Rod Poskochil, president of Fiserv Banking Systems and eProducts Group and chair of the Fiserv Product and Technology Committee. Fiserv has acquired more than 125 other companies since its founding in 1984. Its units include seven major credit union core processors: XP Systems, USERS Inc., Summit Information Systems, Galaxy Plus, IntegraSys, AFTECH and CUSA Technologies. Integrating the credit decision engine from Fiserv Credit Processing will allow CUSA Technologies' more than 900 credit union clients to service more loan requests from members, Poskochil says. Another example of initial progress is integrating IPS-Sendero's customer profitability software with ITI's Premier core processing system, allowing customer profitability metrics and rankings to be viewed instantly from any desktop, the company says. Poskochil says technology integration is a major component of Fiserv's growth strategy and has multiple benefits. "Overall, this integration initiative does three things: First, it allows greater functionality of our products. Second, we can develop software more quickly and in a more robust manner because we can reuse technology. Third, we create well-defined interchange points. In other words, we can move smoothly through new software releases," he says. "I look at integration as taking a group of separate pieces – for us, separate products – and creating exceptional value," Poskochil says of the effort that began in 2002. "Each of those pieces is valuable in and of themselves, but, when tied together, they create new functionality and new benefits for Fiserv and for Fiserv's clients." -

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