We have all heard the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And while this can apply when deciding whether or not to buy a new couch or television, this mentality may be costing you in the credit union world.

Just because you know your processes, they work well, and they are what the credit union is comfortable with, it doesn’t mean there aren’t better, more efficient ways of completing your credit union’s day-to-day operations. Credit unions often get stuck in their routines because they work, not taking the time to see what else there might be and what tools might be available.

Let’s explore some of the ways your credit union can review the current processes you may have in place and potentially discover some new ideas for improving efficiency.

Vendor agreements

Vendor agreements is a great place to start reassessing your processes. Review your vendor contracts to see if you are utilizing them to their full potential or if there are opportunities and services you’re missing out on.

Are you paying for things that sounded great when you signed the contract, but are discovering that you aren’t using the service as much as you thought? Do you have vendors that already offer services that you are paying another vendor for? If so, you could be saving money by going with one company for multiple services.

Are you paying your vendors via a check? You could be saving time and money by paying them via ACH. This applies to your EFT vendors as well. Is your back-office staff performing daily journal entries when your EFT vendor offers settlement via ACH? This would be another example of saving your credit union valuable time.

Employee processes

Take the time to review your current processes with your employees to look for inefficiencies and redundancies. Have your employees create procedures for their specific tasks to see where there could be room for improvement or streamlining.

Creating procedures for the day-to-day tasks of your credit union can also provide insight into any trouble areas that you might not have been aware of or tasks that maybe only one of your employees knows how to fully complete.

When reviewing your processes with your employees, this could evolve into new ideas and ways of doing things that will allow your staff more time to concentrate on the most important thing to your credit union, serving the needs of your members.

Technology

With technology ever-evolving, are there processes that are currently being done manually that could be automated or streamlined? New technology may now exist or be more affordable, easier to adopt, or in higher demand than compared to when the processes were implemented.

Reach out to your peers to see what they are using for technology for their day-to-day processes. They might be able to recommend programs or software that you didn’t know existed. As a cooperative, our goal is to share ideas and collaborate. This would be a great opportunity to do so and see what you might be missing!

Explore new avenues

Just remember that this is by no means a comprehensive list. There are plenty of opportunities and spaces around the credit union that can be examined for potential improvement.

If you haven’t reviewed your processes recently, schedule a time before the end of the year to sit down, talk to your team, and highlight pain points or processes they feel could be streamlined. Once you have updated your processes, a question that you will need to ask yourself is, what do you and your team plan to do with the extra time you have found?