CUSO ownership, like credit union ownership, can sometimes feel like a mostly theoretical concept. CU*Answers, a 100% credit union-owned CUSO, is looking to make ownership more real for its credit union clients. To help in this goal, CU*Answers held the first What Makes Data Valuable Executive Boot Camp. The boot camp involves key staff from twelve credit unions attending four two-day sessions  over the course of the next year, during which time they will not only have a voice in the solutions CU*Answers offers, but be intimately involved in how the CUSO designs, builds, and supports them.

Randy Karnes, CU*Answers CEO said: “Our Boot Camps series are designed to find and foster relationships with CU professionals who are willing to take the time to lead our CUSO as owners, no matter what position they fill at the credit union. Ownership is a state of mind. All of us in the CU business who can’t officially own stock in the organizations where we work understand that better than anyone. We know the way to own something is to participate and to find the value to ourselves through that participation.”

Credit unions participating in the What Makes Data Valuable Boot Camp range in size from under three thousand to sixty-five thousand members, and the participants vary in their position with the credit union from the Director of Member Services and Lending to President/CEO. During the first two-day session, attendees met with each other and CU*Answers staff and discussed existing data analysis features included in the CU*BASE^® core platform, as well as other tools, like My CU Today, an online analytical tool for credit unions. Credit union and CU*Answers staff left the session with assignments to complete before the next meeting in February, revolving in part around starting the discussion at the credit union about the importance of data and its role in the industry.

“In the credit union business, people seem to be more interested in gathering and storing data than in actually using it,” added Karnes. “Our job as a group is to convince CUs to spend more time on what the data means, and acting on that understanding. We need to make data gathering more time and cost efficient and to invest more resources into analysis and action. That requires people with a passion and curiosity for data, and by gathering those people in a room, we can accomplish just that.”

Visit http://www.cuanswers.com/resources/bootcamps/ for additional information, including the upcoming Building Solutions as a Co-Op Executive Boot Camp.