Link to original article here on CUI.

Revealing the wants, behaviors, and characteristics of your members has become among the most commonly discussed topics of the exploding phenomenon called “Big Data.” Research firm Gartner predicts that the CMO’s spending in technology will outpace the CIO’s by 2017, fueled in large part by customer analytics initiatives.

What does customer analytics have to do with managing credit unions? Credit unions leverage customer analytics to engage members, identifying who their best members are or those most likely to churn and developing personalized means to keep them. Mark Meyer from the Filene Research Institute suggests; Credit unions, which historically have been less operationally efficient than their banking peers, should use this economic up tick to become leaner, and explore competitive advantages.

Credit Unions are already sitting on a potentially great competitive advantage but too few of them are acting on it. Transaction history, fraud, and other member data available to credit unions can be leveraged to reveal valuable member insights, including predicting future activity, but all of the data in the world is useless if it goes un-analyzed.

Knowing this, what is keeping credit unions from leveraging customer data for a more personalized member experience?

ENGAGE TO SAVE YOUR BEST MEMBERS USING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICSCUI_image1

Within Credit Unions, there are a number of fundamental challenges preventing a more personalized member experience, including an inability to gain insights quickly enough, not having enough useful data, and having inaccurate data. And it is only getting worse as the steady drumbeat of innovations, Web, Email, Search, Mobile, Social, continues to layer ever more member touch points Credit Unions have to account for with each department, and branch.

Members demand more from Credit Unions today than just basic asset management; members need to feel empowered and engaged as individual users. Most member loyalty initiatives are crippled in their ability to engage their existing member base in an integrated way, or even understand who their members are, spending countless dollars to bring in new members, only to have existing members leak out of that same funnel.

Credit unions need a solution that brings the member to the center of your operations. If this is a challenge in your organization, you are not alone; but you are behind. Business intelligence has become a necessity for financial institutions and is often a missed opportunity for Credit Unions. Effective reporting and customer analytic strategies provide valuable insights to both Credit Unions and their members, for better forecasting and more informed decision making. Credit Unions that invest in their Business Intelligence now will be able to track and retain high value members and reduce churn by better understanding, monitoring, and acting on member data. By investing in business intelligence, credit unions aren’t just working to improve member engagement now but developing a platform for future insight discovery, as member interactions increase, and the ability to record those interactions improves.

Written by 3Cloud (formerly CCG), that helps companies become more insights-driven, solve complex challenges and accelerate growth through industry-specific data and analytics solutions.