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Bring in the business integration team.
This post is excerpted and adapted with permission from GonzoBanker.
Credit unions are struggling with their vendors more than at any time in the past, and this pain has increased just when tech has become the most important strategic challenge in our industry. The root cause of this struggle is not that vendors have bad intentions or lack competence. Vendors are struggling to deliver because they are dealing with the same pace of change and complex technical mandates that all businesses are facing, and they are fighting for talent that would much rather work in industries like software, gaming and e-commerce than good old banking.
CUs and vendors are cramming to learn about digital delivery, sophisticated analytics, robotic processes and API-integrated systems while operating legacy businesses. But when it comes to new tech, for all but the top 20 banks, building new, large-scale systems is cost prohibitive and fraught with risk, while the “buy” marketplace is full of half-finished solutions, unkept promises, and vendors’ tepid willingness to integrate other systems.
In this environment, CUs need to carefully buy solutions in the vendor market, demand stronger vendor performance, and look for systems that can easily be configured or customized to the bank’s needs. At the same time, they must learn how to build the system integrations, customizations and analytic capabilities around the vendor solutions they buy.
The best hope is for executives to acknowledge the need, take more control of the organization’s destiny, and create a new force of superheroes inside their organizations: the business integration team.
The BIT is the talent that holds together the alignment between the bank’s strategy and its technology and analytic capabilities. It’s a cross-functional mix of business and technology professionals that are in the foxhole together, navigating through the pain and heartache of software and systems.
Instead of waiting for vendors to deliver on grandiose promises and being disappointed, CUs must use a BIT to execute in a more self-reliant manner with technology – sometimes with the vendor and other times around the vendor.
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Steve Williams is a principal with CUES Supplier member and strategic provider of technology and risk services Cornerstone Advisors Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona.
