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Synergent’s mission is to ‘help credit unions succeed and improve the financial lives of their members.’ In our monthly Employee Spotlight series, we feature one of our dedicated staff members to help you get to know the people who are working as an extension of your credit union team.
Liz Ouellette
Liz Ouellette, Sales Engineer, has dedicated her career to the credit union movement. Ouellette celebrated five consecutive years with Synergent this past October, but her time with the organization extends far before that. She started with the Implementations team back in May 2006, focusing on general ledgers (GLs).
“At that time, we were converting all existing clients from one platform to what is known today as Jack Henry™ Symitar®,” explained Ouellette. “I’m thankful that I was able to complete almost 40 conversions in under four years, providing an immense amount of knowledge and hands on experience.”
She stayed with Synergent for nearly 10 years before finding an external sales and management-focused role, still within the financial industry. This helped her continue to develop skills that assisted her when she took a Senior Business Analyst position focusing on conversions upon returning to Synergent.
“My passion is helping people,” said Ouellette. “When I came back to Synergent, there was a position in sales that opened up and I was asked to help fill in, eventually taking the position. I didn’t necessarily choose this role, but I’m thankful it found me! This is my 23rd year working in the credit union industry, and I plan to continue that trend. As long as I’m working with credit unions, that is enough for me.”
The best part of Ouellette’s job, in her opinion, is that “there is no normal.” Her role is to work predominantly with the Jack Henry sales team to educate and assist with new core business.
Meeting the Needs of Credit Unions
“Jack Henry has the core experts, and I am the Synergent expert, if you will,” explained Ouellette. “Through in-depth discovery, all sorts of pain points are revealed where I can problem-solve with core and Synergent-specific solutions.”
Credit unions across the country are impacted by Ouellette’s work because she helps expand Synergent’s borders into new states. She explained that sometimes varying regions have different products or vendors that broaden our horizons. Her favorite part is meeting new people with different experiences and needs.
“The list of what I have learned since joining the company is so long, as I started fresh out of college,” said Ouellette. “I’ve learned so much from the credit union perspective with Implementations, behind the scenes from working on conversions themselves, and then combining the knowledge for new core business.”
Ouellette loves developing strong, lasting, personal relationships with credit unions. However, the pandemic presented obstacles for doing that face-to-face. However, working through unprecedented challenges led Ouellette to one of her proudest moments at Synergent.
“COVID meant doing all of my job remotely, which makes it harder to get to know people,” explained Ouellette. “One of the recently signed core prospects was my longest engagement yet. I did not give up, kept checking in with the CEO, and eventually we got the deal.”
Ouellette’s years of experience with the core processor have equipped her with a vast range of knowledge that allows her to help Synergent keep meeting credit union needs.
“Years ago, I worked with my team to develop efficiency visits for credit unions that recently converted to the new core system,” said Ouellette. “The new system was much more robust, so there was too much to retain during onsite training. I started to visit credit unions and spend time with each department to identify efficiencies, such as workflow or product mix.”
Outside of work, Ouellette enjoys spending time with her two dogs and her cat, golfing, skiing, and spending time with her family and friends.
