Banking Technology Transformation | Cornerstone Advisors

With the right core, digital and other systems, you can compete, thrive and better serve customers and members. Our Technology Transformation services range from helping your bank or credit union select and implement new technology systems, to optimizing the systems you already have for maximum performance. We also have the expertise to help you negotiate your critical vendor contracts. Finally, we can work with you to develop a technology roadmap to determine the state of your current technology and what you need in order to get your bank or credit union future ready.

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Services

Ensure Your Tech Strategy is Future Ready

Today, every company is a technology company— especially financial institutions. Whether it is competitive pressure to meet changing customer expectations, evolving compliance requirements, or the desire to save money and improve efficiencies, banks and credit unions must have clear insight into the state of their technology and the vendors who provide those solutions.

The changes taking place among banking technology systems are happening now at breakneck speed, and financial executives need to understand how to leverage these new systems and their capabilities. There is no one in the industry with a stronger track record of helping financial institutions maximize the returns on their technology investments than Cornerstone.

Technology Assessment & Roadmap

Looking for an independent review of where you are and collaborative guidance on how to get to where you want to be? Cornerstone has developed hundreds of customized technology performance assessments and roadmaps for banks and credit unions of all sizes. This is a mission-critical exercise and can no longer be an afterthought if you want to compete and grow. We leverage proprietary benchmark data so you know how you stack up against peer organizations, research, and the real-world experience of our team of industry veterans to work with you to create a comprehensive technology performance assessment. We will then build an actionable and realistic technology strategic roadmap to set you on a trajectory to achieve near-term and long-term growth and profitability objectives.

System Selection

Your choice of technology can make or break the success of your institution. The right solutions lay the groundwork for a future-ready, high-performing, and compliant financial institution. Our team will guide you through the entire process. We’ll start with the creation of a roadmap to identify customer, product, efficiency improvement opportunities, timing, and budget. We’ll then convert your needs into an RFP, help you interpret the results and build the vendor financial models. We’ll manage the vendors’ demonstrations and the follow-up questions, help with vendor due diligence, and get your team to the best decision. Once a decision is made, we’ll negotiate the vendor contracts and help with implementation, as well as process optimization. Our mission is to ensure your financial institution maximizes its technology investment and that your technology works for you as an asset.

System Conversion & Implementation

New system implementations—especially core—are massive undertakings impacting every department, line of business, and customer. A bad implementation can quite literally “break the bank” and pose serious operational, management, and reputation risks to the organization. And while you will pay your vendor to convert your data, you are responsible for the entire implementation—testing, product, and process design, hardware and network upgrades, business continuity, customer communication, conversion, etc. Cornerstone has helped more banks and credit union with strategy development, vendor evaluations and implementations for core, digital and other systems than any other consultant in the industry. No other firm even comes close.

System Optimization

Not ready to convert to a new solution yet? Still have years left on your current IT contract? Concerned that you are only utilizing 50% of a system’s capabilities but paying for 100% of it? No problem. Our optimization services are designed to help your bank or credit union get maximum value, efficiency and performance from your existing core, digital, lending or other technology systems. We have experts to help you leverage powerful enabling technologies and identify strategies and performance improvements that will help you meet your business needs and ensure you are getting the most out of your existing tech investment so you can continue to meet the operational and competitive pressures of today’s demanding financial environment.

Platforms & Tools

Powered by Data

Our Transformation approach uses a “killer combo” of experience combined with powerful data. We know vendor strengths, weaknesses, and current market pricing through our proprietary data “vaults” – Contract Vault, Vendor Vault, Performance Vault and Analytics Vault.

Contract Vault™ is our proprietary data engine of over 15,000 pricing points collected from negotiating thousands of vendor contracts. Leveraging this information, our team of negotiators provides financial services executives with an objective analysis of market pricing and how it shifts with size, volume, and contract length.

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Vendor Vault™ is our powerful, yet easy to use vendor management platform for ongoing vendor monitoring. It was specifically designed to help you stay on track and ensure you pass your exams. Vendor Vault™, provides data on hundreds of industry vendors serving the financial service market.

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Performance Vault™ puts peer performance metrics at your fingertips and provides you with real-time analytics and insights to help you make data-driven decisions. It features more than 1000 productivity, revenue, and efficiency benchmarks that will enable you to drive high-performance levels across your entire enterprise.

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Brad Smith

Partner

Brad Smith has spent nearly three decades helping the community and regional financial institutions achieve their business goals by integrating strategy with sales, marketing, operations, and technology execution. As a partner at Cornerstone Advisors, Brad leads the Transformation service line and is actively engaged in the firm’s Technology Services practice.

Steve Wildman

Managing Director

As a Managing Director in Cornerstone Advisors’ Technology Solutions practice, Steve Wildman is responsible for all core evaluation and transformation initiatives. Steve has over 30 years of experience assisting credit unions, community banks, thrifts, cooperative institutions, regional institutions, and money center banks with strategic initiatives including systems evaluations, mergers, process improvement, and technology strategies.

Clio Silman

Managing Director

Clio Silman puts her expertise in M&A and systems and process integration to work in her role as an Implementation Practice leader at Cornerstone Advisors. A positive change agent for culture and sustainable success, Clio brings to Cornerstone a proven track record of driving growth and transforming organizations through operational excellence and strong teams.

Sandeep Balan

Managing Director

Sandeep Balan brings more than two decades of leadership expertise in banking, fintech and digital technology delivery to Cornerstone Advisors. As managing director of Cornerstone’s Technology Advisory Practice, Sandeep is focused on financial institutions successfully building efficient, future-centric organizations and achieving their digital, lending, payments and core strategies.

Transformation

The Expertise You Need for Today’s Complex Technology Systems

We help banks and credit unions select, implement/convert and optimize fintech solutions including:

Most Experience in the Industry. Full Stop.

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