The Decision Maker

A professor at the University of Minnesota once taught me that death and taxes are not the only certainties in life, because you can also always count on your budget being wrong. While this (annoyingly) still seems to prove true, there are a number of practices to improve budget planning and optimize the potential of your budget to prepare you for data analytics.  

With fall around the corner, many credit unions are entering the budget planning stages for the next year. If you are planning to remain competitive in the industry,  this does not mean you are simply tweaking minor adjustments from last year’s budget. 

‘Tis the budgeting season and credit unions aiming to kick off a 2015 Big Data and Analytics (BD/A) initiative are all asking the same question: “How much does it cost?”

Finding the “number” means asking and seeking answers to two additional questions.

Question 1 – What is It?

In the spirit of Stephen Covey’s habit #2, “Begin with the End in Mind”, clearly defining the BD/A initiative is essential.  To be successful, the overall objective of the initiative needs to be understood across the organization.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about obscenity, "I know it when I see it". This often seems to be the case with many credit union decision makers when asked to define Business Intelligence (BI) requirements.

Consider this common scenario: an innovative credit union executive champions the BI concept. The executive points out all the flaws in organization’s current reporting and analytics. Then, showing examples of how BI is revolutionizing performance in other industries, secures budget dollars for a BI initiative.

Congratulations! You’ve been tasked by your credit union’s leadership team to plan out the first steps of a Business Intelligence (BI) initiative.

The good news is your organization is convinced that performance improvement will be driven by better, faster information. Now for the hard part: where to begin?