Cruise control – automate Fiserv XP2 processing to get your time back

Time returned on Fiserv XP2 is ROI gained

Fiserv XP2 has been popular for decades now for a simple reason: it just works. But it also requires a lot of drudge work from users, and Credit Union IT staff increasingly have other demands competing for their limited and valuable time. We have a saying at SMA Technologies: When your team is staying late, it’s time to automate.

Credit Union IT teams are under a lot of pressure to stay competitive as fintech makes rapid advances and consumers have more options than ever. Having a lot of manual processes eats up precious time that could be spent pushing innovation initiatives. But what if you could automate almost all of those tedious manual processes not have to split your attention between so many different tasks?

Think of all the errors that could be prevented, and all the time that could be spent doing higher value work. Fingers on keyboards, particularly when doing repetitive manual processes, represents risk. Mistakes aren’t always costly in terms of financial ramifications or penalties, but they always cost time, and time is one of the commodities in shortest supply for any IT team. By automating those common tasks and setting up event-triggered workflows to handle errors and contingencies, operators can free up mental bandwidth to concentrate their efforts on more satisfying projects.

Automate Fiserv XP2

XP2 users are in luck, because it is not a particularly difficult system to automate. XP2 is command line driven, which is slightly antiquated by UI standards, but has a benefit to it when it comes to Fiserv XP2 automation technologies. The same scripts an operator would use to perform their daily functions in XP2 can be directly dropped into a workload automation platform, usually without significant changes. This has the added advantage of your team not needing to spend an inordinate amount of time learning a new system. The last thing you want to do is have to change up all of your scripts and processes to suit a new system.

For teams still running their XP2 jobs manually, it’s not an exciting process. Operators sit at a console issuing command lines to run their jobs and watching until they’re complete before running the next batch job. Alternatively, they’ve got a mix of manual processes and some ad hoc automated scripts, but the issue that tends to come up there is that it’s not centrally managed and even the automation has to be manually triggered. So it’s slightly easier, but operators still have to monitor the system to see when jobs finish so they can fire off the next batch.

Automate nightly processing for Fiserv XP2

Working nights and late into the evening is not an attractive proposition for most people. This limits the ability for credit union IT managers to hire and retain skilled employees. But with a good automation platform, you can automate all of your XP2 processes to run overnight without needing anyone there to babysit the system or enter commands manually.

We call it lights out processing. No one needs to be there because all of the processes that an operator would follow to complete all the batch jobs have been embedded in the automation platform. Thanks to the event trigger capabilities of a good automation platform, IT teams can a set up resolution workflows to have the system run the job again and continue running other jobs in the schedule. Worst case scenario is that the system cannot resolve the failed job, at which point it sends an escalation notification to the IT team, and they can log in remotely to resolve the issue without having to drive into the office.

Other benefits of investing in Fiserv XP2 automation software

Exception handling isn’t handled by IT, but IT still has to deal with moving the files to the account team, waiting for the amendments, and then initiating the next phase. Normally the accounting or finance department handles exceptions during ACH processing, depending on how your organization is set up. With self-service automation, the files can be automatically moved to them, where they can then amend the file with the correct info and hit a button to initiate the next stage in ACH processing with zero IT intervention required. No phone calls, no emails, and no worrying about finishing it within the window. IT teams can focus on other stuff because ACH processing three times per day is fully automated.

If you’re worried about the process not being completed by people outside the IT department, you can stop worrying. Modern workload automation platforms allow transparency into all the automated processes in your system. You can quickly see if a process has been completed, and you can also set up alerts to notify you if a self service process that’s part of a bigger schedule hasn’t been completed within a certain period of time.

Timesaving isn’t limited to ACH processing and account activities when an organization invests in a modern automation platform. It’s not even limited to just the IT department. With self-service automation, complex but repeatable business processes for any department can be turned into on-demand workflows that can be executed with a click of a button by both IT and non-IT personnel. Where clients have found it particularly helpful is in moving files around and requesting reports that IT traditionally needed to pull. Now the IT team can turn the report request into a workflow that is presented to the end-user as a simple interface where they can pull the report themselves whenever they need it without requiring any assistance from IT.

Reporting and monitoring of the entire IT system is probably one of the most underappreciated benefits when an automation platform is installed. The value becomes apparent pretty quickly though, because operations monitoring can be consolidated into a single interface, reducing visual clutter and enhancing visibility across all IT processes in the enterprise. Operators can set up monitoring workflows to report when a service goes down, and even set up self-service workflows to initiate common resolution processes without needing to drive in for after-hours outages.

Does this sound like what you’ve been looking to implement in your XP2 environment?

SMA Technologies can help you get started quick with OpCon. We’re the chosen vendor for over half of credit unions with over $250M in assets, and offer a scalable, future-proof automation platform that can meet your needs now and in the future. Message us and we’ll schedule a conversation to talk about the unique needs of your organization.