By Ray Birch
MADISON, Wis.—Just like AWS predictive analytics help National Football League teams make better decisions during a game, CUES believes the same is true for shaping the direction and effectiveness of credit union talent development.
CUES recently received a 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant. The IMAGINE Grant is a public grant opportunity open to registered charities in the United Kingdom and Ireland and registered 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the United States who are using technology to solve pressing challenges.
CUES was named a winner in the Go Further, Faster category, which recognizes highly innovative projects using advanced cloud services. CUES will receive up to $150,000 in unrestricted funding, up to $100,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, and engagement with AWS technical specialists. Proposals were judged on several factors, including the innovative and unique nature of the project, impact on mission-critical goals, and clearly defined outcomes and milestones.
Jerry Saalsaa, CUESSVP/ chief administrative officer, spoke with CUToday.info about how winning this prestigious grant, and working with AWS, will help his organization provide even greater benefits for credit unions.
One thing the grant funding will do, according to Saalsaa, is allow CUES to leverage predictive analytics to a much greater extent, to more effectively recommend talent development paths for leaders, and to allow CUs to access that data easily.
“We currently can prescribe courses and content to our members based upon their history, what their roles are in the credit union. That was a big move for us,” explained Saalsaa, who said that ability will be enhanced. “We get a lot of credit unions and members who tell us they have so little time, how can CUES tell us what we should learn next. With the level of content and learning data we track on our members, we can recommend to our members what they should do next. Our members asked for help with this, so we implemented that in June through our myCUES member dashboard.”
Next for CUES, Saalsaa said, is further leveraging this capability, with the help of AWS, and to provide each credit union easy myCUES dashboard access to the analytics.
“In 2025,we’re going to be providing analytics to the credit union, to those HR talent development teams, to the board liaisons for the board of directors, so they have access to it anytime,” he said.
Saalsaa said CUES will rely even more on data analytics in the coming years to identify any professional education and talent development gaps credit unions may have.
Filling Gaps
“So, as we're seeing the trends move towards a specific topic for any specific functional area of a credit union, we can also start to predict what content and courses we need to help support them with something we might not have today,” Saalsaa explained, noting data-driven artificial intelligence will play a key role. “There are analytics for us to advance our strategies and to help fill in those gaps to allow us to help credit unions where they need it the most.”
AWS Account Executive Leo McDonald told CUToday.info the grant funding and AWS partnership will play a role in helping CUES advance credit union leadership development.
“By leveraging data analytics and AI, that really is going to help CUES advance their efforts in supporting leadership development and career growth within credit unions,” McDonald said.
McDonald said AWS intends to become more involved with credit unions.
“We have a dedicated credit union team here at AWS,” McDonald explained. “So, we're focused on helping meet credit unions where they're at in their digital transformation efforts, and to advise and encourage regarding new ways of thinking about digital transformation.
“Credit unions have been around for more than 100 years. And, over time, there’s been a history of steady growth,” McDonald continued. “As far as technology goes with credit unions, I think there has been a steady, cautious adoption. It's a really exciting time right now with so much new technology happening and the pace of innovation.”
McDonald said AWS is interested in working with credit unions on their cloud strategy.
“That's one key area and another is data strategy—getting access to a credit union’s data and uncovering insights about their members and their business,” he said. “And, lastly, the Gen AI space is really exciting. At AWS we are interested in partnering with our credit union customers to help them with their Gen AI strategies.”