It's that time of year (no, not THAT time, that was last month) this is the time of year when the new year is laid out in front of us like a blank page, and we are looking to fill it with all the accomplishments of the next 12 months. On the list of 2023 goals is most likely any of the following;
Growth
Member engagement
Efficiency/productivity
These goals need to leverage data to get them to the finish line. However, as your credit union starts talking about data, it can feel like no one speaks the same language.
Let's unpack a few items to help make this easier.
What is a data use case?
A data use case is a problem that you leverage data to solve.
Translation: Use case = business problem = member problem
Member's Problems
Your members have only four problems they want your credit union to help them solve. They are:
1. Transportation.
The member needs transportation to accomplish basic needs. This should not be confused with an auto loan. The credit union should consider itself as the conduit to transportation.
2. Shelter.
The member needs a place to call home as a basic need. This should not be confused with a mortgage. The credit union is the conduit to shelter.
3. Travel and play.
The member desires either travel and/or play. They need a financial partner to help them achieve these goals within their current financial means.
4. Rainy day and retirement.
The member needs a financial partner to help set up short-term and long-term deposits.
The challenge for credit union members is the friction they encounter with the credit union while getting these problems resolved. Focusing on these member problems and identifying the critical knowledge gaps to lessen the friction with the credit union are easy, win-win actions.
One of the best discoveries is that data helped us to find a more direct approach to a solution. We could discover if members were having issues with different services or what products had higher adoption rates. With this data, we could produce solutions to improve a process or market a specific product. We could see if one location was busier than another. The data helped us focus our resources on specific issues to help our members and employees.
VP Marketing, Credit Union located in the Mountain West
How to build a data capability
Building a data capability is a formal way to develop talent skills and abilities to create data insights and generate actions from those insights.
Translation: How to build data confidence in talent so they can continually stay curious and increase their data consumption and data-generated actions.
When bringing data to the credit union, start out with small, tangible data artifacts to help build confidence.
The first thing that was fairly quickly created was a simple goals-tracking dashboard. This dashboard is provided to our entire team weekly and is discussed during our weekly all-staff meetings. Other larger data analysis programs, like those tracking member service estimates and products per household, are developing much more slowly. It's also been a challenge to break from the day-to-day activities and dedicate time to ensuring that our metrics are as accurate as we would like. This process has been very slow and iterative, and it's not nearly as far along as we would like. But it has been making steady progress. The staff seems to be very motivated by the weekly goals dashboard. This is especially true for the lenders, who have consistently met and exceeded their monthly goals since this dashboard was rolled out.
CEO, Credit Union in the Midwest
As you embark on your goals, think about the friction the member has doing business with your credit union and the information you need to lessen it. Formalizing how knowledge is captured and activated will most likely impact growth, member engagement, and productivity.
Ready to ACTIVATE
your data?
Then plan on attending the
It's hard to know where to go
when you don't have a map,
the same is true with activating your data.
Let's get you and your data activated by the end of February
Perfect time to send more than one team member AND check that
"launched data journey in 2023" box DONE!
Registration is CLOSING Soon - Friday, January 20th
Helping you fill knowledge gaps!
We believe that data transformation doesn't have to feel overwhelming or expensive to be impactful. After helping over 600 credit union leaders launch their data journeys, we have identified several consistent knowledge gaps. We have worked hard to fill these gaps with a variety of educational artifacts: