Rural Multi-Branch Credit Union CIO Reflects on 2020

Guest Andrew Bertrand, CIO ofOur Community Credit Union discusses 2020's most pressing industry issues with podcast host Josh DeTar of Tyfone. Topics Bertrand covers include strategizing for organizational growth, improving member experience, reducing costs through IT, and achieving many of the critical objectives that support those primary goals. He discusses the special operational challenges for rural CUs. He further examines lessons for CU leadership from the COVID-19 crisis and how to analyze and apply those in future planning.

Andrew discusses Our Community's decision to become a data-driven organization, and he walks listeners through processesOur Community CU has undergone in the pursuit of improving efficiencies, including the enterprise's transformational IT infrastructure changes. He explains how this major systemic upgrade is advancing the CU's major objectives and goals, and helping to preserve its brand identity as digital becomes increasingly prominent in its service model.

He explains the overarching necessity of reaching a state of digital maturity, to meet CU members' ever-changing needs. This is, for example, as CUs must demonstrate agility in accommodating rapidly increasing rates of fuller adoption of digital for personal financial management, which entails the need for increased online member engagement across a range of purposes, such as marketing, account management, financing, problem resolution, and much more.

The discussion goes on to feature Andrew Bertrand's summaries of the kinds of questions that CIOs need to ask to understand the significance of various data trends for determining short-term tactical responses to emergent challenges as well as to formulating its longer-range strategic plans.