One reason I consider myself to be an Enterpriser, and part of this project, is that the very notion of the Enterpriser is laser-focused on business outcomes. Particularly for those of us who started in our careers as more hands-on technologists, the challenge has been to leave those days behind, stay current, and get focused on how much business value the technology is actually delivering.
A key focus of my efforts recently has been to drive compelling business value back to our customers and to the organization at large. A lot of that push has been around mobile products, the success of which we measure by looking at how much product selling and business volume we generate. Mobile is one technology with a huge ability to disrupt markets and enhance sales. At CUNA Mutual Group we developed a mobile app for credit union customers that drove more than $1 billion in loan requests as well as additional volume in attaching insurance to those loans where appropriate. That kind of result might not be a classic IT metric, but few of our metrics are what one might think of as classic. So how did we get there?
Always Go to the Customer
To build more business with customers, we made a real effort to get outside our walls and talk to them. Was there any low-hanging fruit based on the way we serviced them, even if it was a mundane thing? All you have to do is walk into one of your locations, in my case a credit union, and there are tons of people coming through the lobby. You can get a sense pretty quickly for what is really important to them.
One seemingly minor item for our customers was changing an address after a move. Getting that right is actually pretty important, as well as ensuring that it’s right everywhere. A less common example would be a policy holder who files a disability claim, or even one who passes away. From the perspective of the beneficiary, this is a very powerful and emotional life event, and the onus is on us to compress the length of time needed to fulfill the claim. When we stepped back and heard customers tell us what their experience was like across our business lines we realized, 'Wow, we could be a lot better than that.' It certainly wasn't rocket science.
Applying the technology and process changes to make customers' desires a reality is highly rewarding. That's one reason why I believe we in IT need to do more to educate our stakeholders about what’s possible. An analogy I recently heard is that we have to lay more track in front of the locomotive of the business as it accelerates. Every company has a tremendous wealth of information about customers. The struggle – and the opportunity – is to use technology to turn that information into customer experiences that build sales.
Read Minda Zetlin's article, "Break down the silos between IT and the business."
Rick Roy is the former Senior Vice President of Shared Services and Chief Information Officer for CUNA Mutual Group; a $16 billion diversified financial services company, headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. He is responsible for corporate shared services including information technology, project management office, security, real estate and facilities, and vendor sourcing and procurement. His organization has been honored by CIO 100, InformationWeek 500, and Insurance Networking News for innovative business technology.
