From Legacy Systems to Modern ERP: Lessons from Arkansas Federal Credit Union

As the largest credit union and one of the largest financial institutions in the state, Arkansas Federal Credit Union (AFCU) prides itself on offering products and services that its members need and will find useful. According to Jonathan Adams, VP/Controller, AFCU also has a list of 10 core values that dictate how they treat each other as well as their members, vendors, and community, and these values are the difference maker that’s helped them attract new business and support their growth.

“We celebrate achievement of all these different core values,” he says. “One of the core values is to think differently, which involves finding new ways to do something. It can mean not being afraid of taking risks.”

Sometimes those risks can result in failure, he says, but at other times, thinking differently can create success. For the AFCU team, one of the successful risks was deciding to upgrade their aging business management system to Acumatica’s more modern, adaptable solution.

Says Jonathan. “Going from Dynamics Great Plains, that we’d been on for so long, to Acumatica felt like we were coming 25 years into the future in one leap.”

Leaping Into the Future With Acumatica

AFCU was founded in 1956 by seven U.S. Military airmen. It started as Little Rock Air Force Base Federal Credit Union (LRAFB FCU), which served the financial needs of local military personnel. The credit union eventually broadened its membership base to include the surrounding communities, shortening its name to reflect the growth. Now, AFCU is nearing $3 billion in total assets, boasts 23 branches throughout Arkansas (with more than 400 employees), and serves more than 167,000 members.

AFCU’s success, however, didn’t come without its challenges. One of the biggest was its reliance on Microsoft Dynamics – Great Plains (GP), an on-premises, Windows-based platform that was outdated, rapidly becoming unsupported, and the creator of bottlenecks within the business.

“Dynamics GP was missing a lot of features, and a lot of the reporting was very manual,” Jonathan explains. “The functionality was just not there for us. For example, we were using multiple systems for processing accounts payable.”

Jonathan and the leadership team knew it was time to let GP go and to find a modern, secure, and cloud-based solution that could:

• Eliminate their bottlenecks
• Automate key controls for compliance
• Empower decision making

Additionally, AFCU knew the new system needed to integrate seamlessly across functions while also delivering efficiency, flexibility, and scalability. So, on the advice of and with the help of their trusted, long-standing advisor, Bartlett, Pringle & Wolf (BPW), they selected Acumatica.

“Acumatica gives us a one-stop spot for just so many different tasks.”

How AFCU’s Implementation Went and the Benefits That Resulted

One of many factors that make up a successful ERP implementation is managing the change to a modern system —and the AFCU leadership was all in.

“The first thing we did was we all committed to the change,” Jonathan says. “Any type of significant system implementation is going to take work, and you’re going to be doing things on top of your day-to-day jobs, so I was really proud of my team for committing to do that.”

The next step was working closely with BPW to develop testing plans, which BPW developed into workflows and processes AFCU could use moving forward. But AFCU’s implementation was not a completely traditional one. Jonathan says that after they had live data in the test system, they set up a “scavenger hunt,” where the team explored the system’s capabilities, encouraging familiarity and proficiency from the start.

Once AFCU was up and running on Acumatica, which unified its accounts payable, fixed asset depreciation, expense deferrals, and corporate credit card reporting tasks onto one platform, the benefits began rolling in. They included:

• Increased transparency and oversight (e.g., corporate credit card expense management) to ensure compliance and accountability.
• Enhanced efficiency by expediting the invoice approval process, enabling the accounts payable team to double the frequency of disbursing invoice payments.
• Improved reporting, providing leadership with clearer visibility into financial performance.
• Eliminated data siloes and improved accuracy.

And with Acumatica’s unlimited user model, AFCU empowers each team member with access and is growing without penalty.

Acumatica’s Flexible Foundation Offers AFCU Greater Efficiency and Control

AFCU is embracing the future with easy-to-use, intuitive Acumatica as its foundation, and Jonathan is excited to tap into its newfound flexibility. “If there’s something I want to make quicker, faster, stronger, bigger, better, I feel I can accomplish that through Acumatica. I may have to pull in BPW to turn some wheels or change some gears, but we’ve had so much success…just being able to modify and make updates as we need to.”

He adds: “We just know as circumstances change and new needs arise that we can accomplish a lot through Acumatica.”

AFCU leapt into the future by implementing Acumatica, and it’s ready to fully utilize Acumatica’s advanced, business-growing tools to continue expanding and delivering exceptional service to its community.

To learn more about Acumatica’s future-impacting, AI-first ERP solution, contact our team and request a demonstration today.