We cannot overstate the importance of regularly analyzing existing people, processes, systems, and tools to achieve operational excellence. Particularly in this time of tight liquidity and merging mid- to small-size credit unions, operational efficiency and highly effective project management are crucial.
Strategically planning to align goals to your operational capacity is a must to ride out the storm and, philosophically, provide the best return to your members. Streamlining inefficiencies strengthens credit unions’ bottom lines, improves the member experience and boosts ROA, which is how we continue providing the best services and dividends possible to our member-owners.
Planning Properly and Completely
Solving issues requires planning and organizing before executing. The first step is to understand the problems affecting the members and keeping the credit union from reaching its goals. The second step is to engage your people in developing options that prioritize member needs and then select the best option to achieve the desired goals. Examining the people, processes, and tools/technologies to ensure the right incremental changes are made will then lead to operational efficiency within your credit union and, in turn, increased efficiency for your members.
Streamlining and Modernizing Operations
The operations department is often thought of as the back office of a credit union, but it’s far from that. When it comes to keeping things running, especially for small and mid-size credit unions, looking at things through an operations lens can help you gain clarity, determine where the focus needs to be placed, and which departments need the most assistance to execute the plans your team develops to increase efficiencies and operate more effectively.
Credit union departments supporting operations must also develop a culture that includes a discipline of sound project management. Projects that emanate from process improvement planning will not succeed in a chaotic situation where roles and deadlines are not clearly defined and enforced. Addressing the most critical tasks and then focusing your resources on them is the only way to increase efficiency and help you and your employees avoid burnout.
Impacting Members Positively
Aligning your changes and improvements to the members’ expectations and financial aspirations solidifies the foundation of your efforts. For example, it all starts at account opening. Right from the beginning, a potential member wants the process to be convenient, quick, easy and personalized. A painstaking application process without trained people available to support the effort can quickly turn away a prospective member.
The same goes for existing members applying for a loan they may desperately need or have gotten excited about from a targeted advertisement. And for those members that find themselves in financial distress, the collections process can be quite frustrating. When the right people and processes are not in place to bridge the gap between the credit union and the members in need of support to clear their debt, they can easily disengage from their relationship with the credit union, affecting their financial well-being and the Credit union’s bottom line.
The overall member experience can often be significantly improved by taking some simple steps to engage your people in identifying inefficient processes in your operations and gathering and analyzing data to understand member needs. Then adapt people, processes and technology to meet member expectations.
Bottom Line
Greater investment in your credit union’s existing people, processes, and technology can be a shot in the arm for your credit union’s ROA in the current challenging environment. The team at O2 has delivered results to many credit unions by implementing our strategic planning, operational efficiency, and project management service offerings. Our experience in all three areas and our “roll our sleeves up” approach is the key to achieving operational efficiencies. Give us a call and get results!
