Data and Analytics Roles at your Credit Union

Digital innovation is sweeping across the financial services industry and creating opportunities for banks and credit unions to leverage data as a source of competitive advantage.

Until recently, most credit unions were delegating data management and analytics to the IT department, which in turn created data silos that inhibited the enterprise use of data.

Has your credit union made the business case for creating an analytics team to spearhead important data initiatives? If so, you now need to hire or train the right talent that can turn data into value and deliver on your organization’s data strategy

Chances are you have numerous questions whirling around about how to define the key data roles and responsibilities.  When venturing outside the credit union to evaluate data leadership, this list of tips breaks down key roles and how they should align with your needs.

Chief Data Officer

The CDO is a senior executive who bears responsibility for the credit union’s enterprise data and analytics strategy, data governance, data management, and data utilization.  The CDO’s role will combine accountability and responsibility for information protection and privacy, information governance, data quality and data life cycle management, along with using member data to create business value. ¹ 

This last point is arguably the most crucial.  If your analytics team is not delivering business value then you’re not achieving the team’s full potential.  The CDO should focus on measurable outcomes for specific use cases to provide the necessary cultural and change management sparks to garner enterprise-wide buy-in.

Data Scientist

A data scientist masters a whole range of skills and tasks from being able to handle the raw data and analyzing that data with the help of statistical techniques, to delivering actionable recommendations based on the underlying data.

The title “Data Scientist” has become a bit of a buzzword as of late.  If your “Data Scientist” can query a database, but the extent of the statistical knowledge is mean, median, and mode…they aren’t a data scientist.

“Real” data scientists have deep knowledge of statistical and probabilistic models and know how to leverage those models for specific analytic applications.

The Data Analyst

The data analyst will retrieve and gather data, organize it and use it to reach meaningful conclusions.  The insights that data analysts bring to the credit union can be valuable in identifying and even helping to predict the needs of the credit union’s members.  They help develop effective ways to collect the data and compile key findings into reports to share with other teams within the credit union.

Think of the data analyst as the individual who translates between the technical world and the business world.  This individual needs to have basic competencies from a technical perspective, but, most importantly, they need to be able to interpret technical knowledge into practical business terms and vice-a-versa.

A good data analyst doesn’t just produce charts, graphs, and other fancy visualizations.  They produce clearly articulated meaning to describe what the visualizations mean to the business.

ETL Developer/Data Engineer

The ETL Developer/Data Engineer is a critical member of the data analytics team as they are dedicated to the fundamental process of capturing, storing and processing your data.  If your CU leverages a data warehouse as your analytics platform, then the “ETL Developer” most aptly describes the job title.  If your organization is leveraging a data lake or hybrid platform, “Data Engineer” is a more appropriate title.

In the end, this role boils down to ingesting new data sources into the platform.  This may come from non-core third-party applications (i.e. consumer LOS, real estate LOS, online banking, etc.) to external data sources (i.e. demographic data, economic indicators, social media interactions, etc.).

Report/Visualization Developer

To effectively deploy self-service reporting and analytics through your BI portal (i.e. Tableau, Power BI, Information Builders, etc.), someone must be tasked with creating these reports and dashboards. This is the critical role of the Report/Visualization Developer.

If your credit union embraces a more decentralized approach to data analytics, then these resources may reside in the business areas instead of centrally managed.  Regardless of where they reside within the organization, this is an essential function for providing a front-end to your analytics platform.

The Right Role for Your Credit Union?

As credit unions grow and look to remain competitive, there’s an obvious need to hire the right data talent who are highly skilled in analytics, who can interpret data, and insight and tangible business value. Demand for data expertise is growing every day. Be sure to understand which roles are specifically needed by your organization.  Most credit unions don’t have the necessary budget to hire each of the resources discussed.  Determine where the greatest internal need exists and identify strategic partners who can assist with the rest of the functions.

The bottom-line, all organizations have the power to become data-driven by accessing data skills – and on almost any budget.  Ready to formulate a winning data analytics strategy?  Contact The Knowlton Group to get started.

Sources:

1. Gartner Chief Data Officer Survey