After a 10+ year transition, very few credit unions are now on-premise for digital banking. Hosting in the cloud is the most secure, efficient and cost-effective way to run digital banking. The forces driving this change also apply to many other services and projects the credit union requires.
The growing adoption and potential of the digital channel has pushed the industry to increase the sophistication, complexity (at least on the backend) and range of services offered digitally. The depth of knowledge and expertise required to get the most out of a digital banking platform often exceeds what the credit union can allocate to the project.
In the most common approach today, a company develops a product, implements, trains, supports and upgrades the product. The credit union is left to decide what resources they can allocate to the product and how to manage it.
With managed services the developer of the product brings their expertise to partner with the credit union to run and manage the product. In our experience this results in a better utilization of the product functionality, a more cost-effective effort and more and better services available to the members.
We analyze our client’s utilization of digital services. The results clearly show the credit union staff, as great as they may be, are pulled in too many different directions to have the time and expertise to bring out the full potential of the product. We believe managed services will be an important and growing trend over the next 10+ years.
Author: Chris Doner, Founder and CEO, Access Softek