What's the PLANet advantage? When you subscribe to PLANet, you get the only affordable crisis planning and disaster recovery tool designed specifically for credit unions. As a member of the PLANet community, you'll have access to the most powerful and cost-effective way to protect your organization's interests.

• Why should I use PLANet?
  Find out why PLANet will work for you.
• How do I use PLANet?
  Discover how easy and manageable it is to work with PLANet
• What do I get when I purchase PLANet?
  Learn about the many benefits of being a part of the PLANet community.
• What do others say about PLANet?
  See what our customers, the media and a banking association have to say about PLANet.

For examples and ideas about how other financial institutions are using PLANet to meet their continuity planning challenges, take a look at the related links on the right hand menu.

Why should I use PLANet?
PLANet gives you the advantage of a comprehensive and affordable planning tool that’s easy to use, flexible enough to meet your needs and available when you need it.

As the leading Web-based continuity planning tool, PLANet meets your varied BCP needs:

• Reduces your time and cost – those normally connected with paper plans.
• Helps you comply with the latest FFIEC BCP requirements.
• Assures your customers and employees that your business can withstand any disaster.

The latest version, PLANet 3, was developed with consideration to the regulatory guidelines you face, recommendations from your industry and newly recognized best practices in business continuity.

Here are just a few of the new product’s enhancements:

Pandemic Recovery Scripts: PLANet’s Pandemic Readiness script allows the user to identify an individual to serve as a pandemic coordinator, establish a pandemic leadership team and review existing plans to identify critical processes that would need to be supported during a pandemic. To appropriately address an outbreak while it’s happening, PLANet provides the Pandemic Event Response script with easy-to-follow steps where common pandemic issues can be resolved quickly and easily. Click here to learn more.

Usability Improvements: PLANet has a new appearance that makes planning easier. The field length for entering data has been expanded for added flexibility, a tab feature and log-off button have been added and there is now the ability to duplicate an existing record.

Plan Structure: Users will now have the ability to create unlimited plans in PLANet so financial institutions with multiple locations, regions or branches can have different customized plans. Plus, users can create separate specific plans for each type of recovery effort like emergency response, crisis management, IT recovery and pandemic planning.

Concurrent Users: PLANet allows multiple users to be logged into the system at the same time to edit their plans. This allows the user to decentralize their planning efforts and avoid the need for exclusive time to build and maintain their plans.

Enhanced Security Options: One of the most important facets of any plan is data security. Users can be granted access to see plans online that were printed by other user accounts and can change passwords without having to contact Strohl Systems. Plus, PLANet administrators will also have the ability to control other users’ access rights more easily.

Import Expansion: Leveraging existing information from other sources is important when planning. If you’re like administrators at other community financial institutions, maintaining your business continuity plan is just one of your many responsibilities. PLANet 3 offers an entire universe of convenient features to make your job easier. Users can now import crucial recovery information from programs like Excel and Word into any of the data dictionaries in PLANet, saving time and effort when building plans.

Embedded Documents: Users can also embed external documents directly to their plan in PLANet 3, like floor plans, network diagrams or any other type of documents you will need in support of your plan. Common file types include .doc, .txt, .rtf, .pdf, .csv, .xls, .vsd and .ppt.

Call Chain Additions: Contacting your employees is vital to a streamlined recovery effort. In the new version, users will be able to create multiple call chains for employees and vendors. PLANet will also allow a person to appear in multiple call chains within a plan and alternates can be assigned for each call list position.

Additionally, a redundant calling chain feature has been added so the final person on the call list can contact the first person to acknowledge receipt of the message.

Customizable Screens: Each financial institution is unique and with PLANet 3, users can continue utilizing the terminology to which they are accustomed. With the ability to mask fields and keep and change terminology, plan builders will have a clear understanding of what is being requested in particular fields when they input their information.

Dependency Map: PLANet provides users with the ability to see which Processes and Applications rely on others throughout the plan through a unique dependency map. This graphic representation makes planners aware of the relationships of these items, making it easy to avoid the chain effect caused by overlapping priorities.

Assessing Vulnerabilities with BIA/Risk Assessment: Staying compliant has never been easier with PLANet’s more robust Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment modules. Users will have the ability to identify interdependencies between business functions and the threats each particular user may face more clearly.

Test My Plan: In keeping with the newest FFIEC and NCUA regulations, the “Test My Plan” option guides you through the entire testing process from beginning to end.

Audit History Feature for Tracking Plan Changes: When users make changes to their plans, you will now not only be able to see when the change was made but see all of the change’s complete details as well as who made the change. This check and balance system will be helpful during plan audits and for administrators to track department plan progress.

How do I use PLANet?
From step-by-step planning that helps protect your vital resources to comprehensive recovery scripts that get you up and running again, PLANet is there when you need it most.

Create Your Plan
Using PLANet to build your plan is simple. Log on and follow the easy, step-by-step instructions.

You’ll be able to see all the records associated with your plan and you can see what specific business functions have been assigned to your plan.

When entering your data, one way to ensure that plan information is accurate is through the use of pick lists. By choosing from pick lists, you have control over what data is input into the field. Through the security function, administrators can decide whether or not planners have the ability to add new items to the pick lists.

Date fields have a calendar display to help you make sure the correct date is chosen. Numeric only and several memo fields have been added as well.

Another way the product has streamlined planning is by allowing you to “browse” for the information you need. By selecting the “browse” button, you can directly link to another record in another table. You’ll now be able to create relationships between records and tables, allowing for the most accurate information every time.

Similarly, when you assign inter-dependencies or other processes and applications to any business process, you’ll be able to view them graphically.

When you’re finished with particular aspects of your plan implementation, you can use easily identifiable breadcrumbs to navigate back.

Recovery Teams
When selecting recovery teams, you’re able to create your own teams and positions as well as select from many pre-existing recovery teams. Plus, you can now customize your teams and establish details and assignments about each position on the team.

Call Chains
Developing call chains is also vital to your plan building process and can be done using an easy-to-use, graphical, drag-and-drop interface.

Recovery Processes
You can assign the predetermined recovery scripts, modify those processes and then set the criteria for approval. The new interface will guide you through the appropriate steps to assign specific resources needed for recovery of this process. PLANet offers a list of predetermined recovery processes, each with their own unique recover script already written to them. And with this new version of PLANet, you can pull the information from your Business Impact Analysis into your plan.

Plan Publication
You can select from established or default table of contents and view a publish history. Or, you can customize the table of contents for whatever output you require.

Access Your Plan
Use PLANet to access your critical, plan information anywhere, anytime. See for yourself and view our demo!

What do I get when I purchase PLANet?
As a member of the PLANet community, you’ll have access to the most powerful and cost-effective way to protect your organization.

Available with a variety of delivery and functional options, new PLANet versions include:

PLANet for organizations looking for an unparalleled feature set, cutting edge technology and our un¬precedented Strohl Support and Expertise; all in one planning tool. This version has the functionality that Strohl’s products are known for, but has been scaled to meet and exceed the business continuity needs of our financial institutions.

PLANet Professional with more customization options, unlimited plan building, concurrent usage and more advanced user security. It’s a more advanced planning system and it’s tailored to meet the tests of even the most sophisticated planning programs. Professional is the most robust, scalable and flexible product in the PLANet family.

With both versions, you’ll receive:

Custom Reports
PLANet not only helps prepare you for the unexpected, but also provides you with specific reports on your plan. Standard reports include call chain, employee by name, equipment group and vendors.

Access to PLANet 24x7, 365 days per year
Unlike paper plans, your PLANet plan can be accessed from anywhere and at anytime regardless of the situation. Whether you're at home, out of town, or in your car; if you have Internet access, you're in business.

Ongoing product enhancements
PLANet provides free upgrades automatically. No cumbersome software downloads. No time-consuming maintenance. Just top-quality, around-the-clock service that helps keep your business up and running when you need it most.

Online training
As part of your PLANet subscription, you get unlimited online training for free. You'll learn more about the features, how to get started, how to import data and how to convert existing plan information into PLANet.

Business Continuity Consulting Services
As an additional service, you have access to our staff of Certified Business Continuity Planners (CBCP) to assist you in your planning needs. With over 50 years of in-depth knowledge of banking operations and having developed thousands of disaster recovery plans, Strohl Systems offers a variety of affordable services to meet your needs.

Product Support
Have a question? Give us a call. We back our software with the industry's most readily available and attentive product and service support. Our support representatives are available at your convenience, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Training Tool
Because it is fully customizable, PLANet can be used for an endless number of applications beyond crisis planning and disaster recovery, including training for new employees. You can build and store any step-by-step procedure used within your organization quickly and easily with PLANet.

What do others say about PLANet?
PLANet has received rave reviews from customers, the media and associations alike.

We think PLANet is the best continuity planning tool for credit unions on the market. But why take our word? See what our customers, the credit union media and the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) have to say about us.

Customers
Click here to read testimonials or download case studies from our customers.

Media
Deere & Company Credit Union Relies on Web-Based Preparedness Platform - Click here to read an article from the Credit Union Times that describes how one credit union used PLANet to build their contingency plan and how easy it is to maintain plans.

PLANet for Credit Unions Takes Recovery Planning to the ‘Net – This article which appeared in the Credit Union Times discusses how one of PLANet’s customers uses it to build strong continuity plans.

Small CU Is Able To Build Complete Recovery Plan In Just 1 Weekend – This article which appeared in the Credit Union Journal discusses how a small credit union was able to use PLANet to build comprehensive plans quickly and easily.

Securing the PLANet - This article from the Norristown (Pa.) Times Herald discusses Strohl Systems growth and the newest features in PLANet.

CUNA Technology Council Best of Show Award
PLANet is the proud winner of the 2003 CUNA Future Forum Best of Show Award