At credit unions, good data fuels good operational decision making. Parsing through and analyzing member and community data sets can unlock valuable insights to the wants, needs, and expectations of an institution’s membership.
But who actually owns business analytics? That’s the question we’re asking this week on CreditUnions.com see what we’ve found:
We spend a lot of time at Callahan Associates thinking about who owns analytics at credit unions. Coming from an analytics and reporting background, Charlotte Taft, director of business intelligence at Callahan was ready to enjoy the challenge of learning exactly what business intelligence means within the cooperative movement, but she was surprised by the lack of cohesive narrative on the topic within the industry.
That is by no means to say that business intelligence is not on the rise in a major way among credit unions far from it. Rather, she ran into a highly stratified landscape of different approaches to and readiness to deploy what we know as Big Data.
In What Does Business Intelligence Mean For Credit Unions, Taft finds that credit union approaches to business intelligence vary as they leverage technology to deliver increased member value.
The value of data is incalculable, says Sandy Steward, assistant vice president of IT applications and business support at Langley Federal Credit Union. That’s why, in 2013, the credit union created a business intelligence initiative made up of one business intelligence developer, though it now consists of two business intelligence developers and one database administrator to manage and run the credit union’s data operation.
Realizing a need for a more guided strategic direction, in 2014 Langley created its business intelligence governance committee to provide that focus. This committee meets monthly for approximately 90 minutes and is run by Steward.
In How A Governance Committee Helps Langley FCU Tackle Business Intelligence, Steward discusses the governance committee, projects for which data is most useful, and lessons learned.
Every time a member opens an account, applies for a loan, or uses a credit union service, data trickles in that credit unions can translate into reports. Those reports, when properly sliced and diced, offer business intelligence that cooperatives can use to increase branch and product channel profitability.
Oregon Community Credit Union has more than 100,000 members and nine branches in and around Eugene, OR. It is a forward-thinking financial institution that is aggressively aggregating and parsing membership data in a way that steps into the crystal-ball realm of predictive analysis.
Learn more about how the credit union’s data warehouse is shaping marketing and saving the credit union time and money in A Way To Predict Member Behavior by Callahan contributor Susan Levi Wallach.
In addition to member data, some credit unions are using broader business analytics to analyze internal processes and policies with the goal of improving efficiency and encouraging innovation.
Member One Federal Credit Union is one such institution. In How Analytics Can Drive Efficiency And Innovation, Jeff Wieczorek, chief information officer, and Jason Specht, business analytics innovation team manager, offer their thoughts on the credit union’s new Business Analytics Innovation Team or BAIT for short. Member One created BAIT to move the credit union toward a more efficient and innovative way of doing business, and they share how others can do the same.
Who owns data analytics at KEMBA Financial Credit Union?
We have a number of parties who own data here, and some of this is joint ownership, says Phil Hunt, the suburban Columbus credit union’s senior financial officer. See how the credit union successfully integrated data across different teams in KEMBA Financial Knocks Down Silos With Shared Data Ownership by Callahan senior writer Marc Rapport.
Happy Reading!