Talking Vendor Management at NACUSO

We're in Orlando Florida this week attending the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations annual meeting:  NACUSO Network 17.  We're here supporting our partner, Audit Link who uses the Trust Exchange platform to manage risk for Credit Unions.  

Due to recent regulations Vendor Compliance and Vendor Management are pressing issues for Credit Unions of all sizes. With Audit Link, we've created a series of risk assessment and monitoring products that dramatically reduce the cost of managing a vendor compliance program and increase compliance readiness.  

In creating the joint vendor management products, we made certain that the audit and monitoring products scaled up and down to support credit unions of all sizes.  We have implemented this cost effectively for Credit Unions with a handful of vendors as well as those with hundreds of vendors.  

If you're attending NACUSO and want to learn more, I'll be hanging in the exhibit hall with our partners at Audit Link and CUAnswers.

Tutorial Part 1: How to Build a Custom Compliance Dashboard

Here is the first of a series of tutorial videos we will be releasing over the coming weeks.  This video provides a general overview of our product and demonstrates how easy it is to build a dashboard and track companies.

It's never been easier to build a custom compliance dashboard.

Uploaded by Trust Exchange on 2017-03-31.

To learn more contact us.  HERE

Trust Exchange 2017 Release is LIVE!

Release Features

This major release launches our new user interface, which features beautifully redesigned views, intuitive navigation and forms, greater user control over permissions and significantly enhanced reporting flexibility.  In addition to these platform upgrades, system updates have been implemented that increase speed and stability, several bug fixes have been applied, and support resources have been expanded.

Platform-wide User Experience Redesign

The new Trust Exchange user interface features attractive, easy to understand views and intuitive top level navigation in the left sidebar, as well links to user-friendly support resources and company information in the footer of every page.  In addition, helpful text descriptions and mouse over information is served up contextually throughout, and forms for searches, reports and information entry have been extensively redesigned for simple and efficient input of parameters and data.

Enhanced Dashboard Information

Dashboard pie charts have been replaced with dynamic graphs which provide detailed information on multiple aspects of portfolio list status at a glance.  The new dashboard also features a scrolling feed in the right sidebar highlighting summaries of new events created in portfolio companies.  The dashboard continues to offer direct navigation between portfolios, and list management, monitoring and reporting tools remain accessible via the list drop down menu.  New, expanded reporting capabilities can be utilized by clicking on the “Reports” icon in the navigation sidebar.

Intuitive, Versatile Reporting Tools

In the updated interface, reports are built using easy-to-understand report wizards and permit significantly increased reporting versatility.  Event Reports and Checklist Reports can be created for any number or combination of companies and/or portfolios. Each report type allows the user to select a custom set of events or checklists to report on, and the user may choose from several convenient, pre-set date ranges.

Flexible Company Profiles

Both company profile views and reports increase user control over the types of events displayed and the date range covered.  Enterprise tier users may now delete events which they themselves have created from a company’s timeline.
 

Expanded Company Information

Company information input forms are now tiered in multiple tabs, allowing a user to add basic information and then more details as desired.  A company owner has access to additional tabs to further complete their company’s profile.  This information works hand-in-hand with enhanced search capabilities and will allow prospective customers searching Trust Exchange to more easily find vendors who meet their needs.  Trust Exchange and its partners will also use this information to feature companies who meet the criteria of our enterprise customers who are seeking vendors with specific attributes.

Improved Document Management

Documents can now be uploaded in a user’s “Files” section via an easy-to-use form.  When attaching a document to an event, a user’s list of documents is served up at the bottom of the new event entry form, allowing a user to click to select any number of documents to attach them to the event.

Enhancements

Several useful enhancements have been implemented with this release:

• Editing permissions can now be selectively granted for both private and public events

• A “Comments” field, which displays in the Event Report as well as in event summaries, has been added to all event types

• Users can now navigate to portfolios from a company profile

• Functional organization is improved for portfolio and user settings

• Many entry fields for event creation, checklist monitoring, permissions and reports throughout the platform now use incremental search rather than scrolling lists for input selection

Peer to Peer Risk Assessment

The value and scale of Peer to Peer (P2P) networks is well known. There are several examples of very successful uses of this framework including Skype, Kazaa, Napster etc. The emergence of “social” software and web 2.0 infrastructures is largely based upon the core analogy of P2P. At TrustExchange, we are building the first P2P Risk Assessment Platform which will leverage this model to enable businesses to obtain a more accurate view of risk inside their operating ecosystem (customers, vendors and partners).  Our goal is to be the "waze" of business information.  

To gain a better view of what we’re up to, it may be helpful to first discuss the core idea behind P2P networks and then expand on how it applies to risk analysis.  First, the definition, from Wikipedia, of Peer to Peer networks:

“Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.”

Note the part about peers being “equally privileged, equipotent participants,” and you’ll understand the core idea behind TrustExchange's approach. We’ve noted previously how the existing b2b credit granting and credit management process is broken. And we believe these processes can be greatly improved by creating a P2P, open and transparent risk analysis platform where the data is created and maintained by the peers participating in the network.

Currently, the data used to assess the credit worthiness or viability of a given company is maintained and controlled by the large credit bureaus such as Experian and Dun and Bradstreet. These bureaus are fundamentally middle men with limited value since they don’t grant or issue credit. Businesses make the credit decisions themselves and need a better tool that is more accurate, timely and correlated to viability.

Wouldn’t it be better when analyzing the risk of a given company, if you could not only look at their payment history, but examine how they perform in all aspects of their business? A global risk assessment which takes into account how they perform as a customer, vendor and partner?

Wouldn’t it be valuable to not only look at a single company but view an entire portfolio of customer risk, vendor risk and partner risk?

This is what we are creating at TrustExchange. If you think this is valuable and have strong opinions on the issue sign up now and participate in the discussion and give your input into the development process.