Does spaghetti stick to the wall?

Posted on by Keegan Daniel

Over the weekend, I got into my wife’s car as we were headed out to dinner, and her phone suddenly popped up a message that said we were 18 minutes from our friend’s house. But we were not going to our friend’s house, we were going out to dinner. Is it possible that the technology wrapped into my wife’s vehicle had simply made the prediction that we might be going to our friend’s house at 7 PM on a Saturday night? Whenever we do meet up with our friends, it is typically on a Saturday night and it is around 7 PM. So I was completely baffled by the fact that the technology in the car actually took a chance and had our directions pre-loaded to go to our friend’s house when in fact we were not. The technology took a chance. It was wrong, but it took a chance.

Are we taking chances with our data today? Are we taking chances with our analytics routines? As we continue on the journey of building a business about data, this is a concept we must not forget. Data will undoubtedly bring us down paths where we do not know the answer or perhaps the answer is that this group of members is the most likely to open a checking account, but there is no absolute certainty and that is ok. Taking the chance, and taking the at-bat (if you are into baseball…) is what matters most. Put yourself in the batter’s box and give yourself a chance. Put yourself in the data and send out a message. If you don’t send the message, someone else could be sending the message, or worse yet your audience may not hear your message.

What spaghetti have you recently thrown against the wall?

Weeds

Did I really go into the weeds?

Posted on by Keegan Daniel

Recently I stood in front of 70+ credit union CEOs to present tools that may help them and their team analyze data in new ways. We took a look at new tools for credit union board members and credit union executives to review data points about their credit unions in comparison to other data points from any device that has a connection to the internet. We took a look at how credit union executives can use the concept of dashboard style tools within CU*BASE to review where members are spending their money and how much their staff has refunded in fees to their members.

Speaking to a group of CEOs is different than speaking to a group of credit union employees. Interacting with credit union employees is where I have spent the majority of my career at CU*Answers. Whether it be from a client support role or from a project development role, it has most of the time been an interaction with a credit union employee. Therefore, there has always been a mindset of education. I am always thinking of how I can educate and enable the employee to be able to use the tools in the future. CEOs are more interested in the cliff notes. What is the summarized perspective of what my employees can do? And this is an art form. An art form that I must perfect.

How do you speak with CEOs?