By Randy Karnes
Earlier this year, I asked whether in today’s credit union environment CUs are better off taking a build or buy approach to acquiring the products and services they need to compete. As an industry, we seem too quick to jump to the buy approach—and I get it, it’s easy. The only real investment it requires is the time spent picking a product off the shelf and the money to buy it. But are we hamstringing ourselves by skipping right past building our own solutions?
When I look forward into 2017 and beyond I see credit unions shifting from the storefront to digital branches, where there will be a world of opportunity for new digital services. If we are going to be the owners of those solutions we must move away from the ideas of buy OVER build mwhere buying means the solutions are set by others. Our industry is trying to affordthe solutions of others instead of reigniting a spirit of cooperative entrepreneurialism for solutions that fit our agendas.
Our examiner community does not encourage CUs to own ideas, to own their execution, or to own their own statements of warranty any longer. They almost demand that we outsource idea management to others, we cover (CYA) our warranties with the backstop warranties of others, and we simply mind the stores instead of designing, running, and evolving them.
Better Mousetraps
Maybe people do not really enjoy building better mousetraps anymore. Maybe there are no more customers of ideas out there that really feel like they should own them. I doubt it. I interact every day with motivated individuals in the industry who would champion in-house development with just a little support.
CU*Answers is doing what it can to help foster this shift back to a build first approach to products. With the upcoming Developer’s Help Desk (DHD), CU*Answers will be there to lead the way in Do-It-Together initiatives. As a member-owned cooperative, our credit unions’ success is our priority. Together, we can pool our resources and build solutions that benefit the entire network. And for the credit unions with a Do-It-Yourself mindset, DHD is there to guide those with a builder’s soul in fleshing out the process from early development to end-of-life support.
With three online/mobile banking APIs in beta and more in development, CU*Answers is in the process of assembling a robust catalog of free APIs for credit unions to get to work building solutions they designed.
In 2017, we must, if only through this effort, signal that the spirit of “I can do that better, I should rally my peers to the effort” is vibrant and alive in this industry like never before… maybe it could be contagious.
Randy Karnes is CEO of CU*Answers, Grand Rapids, Mich.