In part one of this series, we established that fixing broken things is foundational for the relationship between a credit union service organization (CUSO) and our credit unions. Once we’ve balanced our resources to handle issues, the next guiding principle of any development team should be very clear: if it adds value, get it done.

This isn’t just about profit. It isn’t just about our value as a CUSO. This is about delivering the products and services we’ve built for our credit unions. It’s our mission to help them get the services we offer into their organizations so they can execute on their own initiatives and realize their own value propositions for their stakeholders.

For a CUSO, technology isn’t an add-on to some other business service or operation; it is the engine driving everything. It must deliver value.

Revenue is not a dirty word

In nonprofit or cooperative spaces, teams sometimes hesitate to prioritize revenue because we advocate for our customers as much as we do ourselves. Let’s be honest. You can’t fulfill your mission if you can’t execute on the agreements you make with your customers. Anything that helps a credit union with member growth, retention, or unlocks new value for members deserves some urgency.

A CUSO needs to deliver the things the credit union has signed up for. Even organizations that don’t need to optimize for every penny need to have enough revenue to support basic operations (Fix it now!) and to fund value building. If it puts money in the door, it goes to the top of the list.

Fixing first enables delivery of value

You can’t make money on broken things. If an application or service fails for a credit union or its members, opportunities are lost, and there is a decay of trust. If you lose the confidence they have in you, you lose not only that moment but opportunities for future collaboration.

Prioritizing fixing things doesn’t compete with our ability to generate value; it enables it!

Earning enables improvement

You may start to see a trend here…If we prioritize fixing things, we are free to deliver value. When we can deliver value, we enable our next priority by having the resources to work on it. You can’t improve and extend your own products and services if you don’t have the resources to fuel the innovation engine.

If your time, money, and people are consumed by a plague of issues or are overloaded just pressing the sales and delivery buttons, you’ll lose your opportunities to make continuous improvements and growth. That could be considered a business luxury in a lot of cases, but if you truly do prioritize keeping things working and delivering value, you can grow your CUSO.

If you need to bolster your infrastructure, rewrite applications for performance, implement new security or anti-fraud protections, or create new offerings, you need free resources. If something is in a great position in the market, you still want to work on making the delivery of that value more efficient. The side effect of focusing on revenue and value delivery is that now it is even easier to execute your first AND second priorities while also enabling your third. You must focus on delivery so you are free to grow and build even more opportunities.

Focusing on priority two: get the value to your customers

Here are some ideas on how to keep delivery of value as a priority:

• Prioritize delivery of value based on impact for your clients. High-impact things should move faster than low-impact things. These values should line up with those of your credit unions.
• Align your resources with the business timelines of your customers as closely as possible. New offerings often come with a marketing push. You need to make sure things are up and running when the curtains are pulled back for members to see the next big.
• Work on continuous improvements for your processes from order through termination. Remove as much friction as possible and make it easy for credit unions to get value from your services.
• Create repeatable and scalable processes and templates for your services. There are only so many ways to create contracts, service configurations, activations, billing, and so on. Take advantage of what you already know works well and reuse it.
• Track your delivery. Measure what you do so you know where you can improve your operations for this key priority.

It’s not just about working on things that might make money. It’s about being intentional, transparent, and fast-moving with your services so you can guarantee that you will!

Next up: part three—make it better, faster, cheaper

In our final article, we’ll look at how innovation, process improvement, and long-term vision turn revenue into growth and ensure your CUSO doesn’t just survive but thrives.