Cloud technology has become vital for a Mississippi-based credit union. That’s in part because a major gap in its operations has been IT staffing as it migrated to a digitized business.

The lack of access to workers was exacerbated, too, by management awareness that a tech-oriented future — for intrinsically non-tech folk as is found running the credit unions — would become difficult to respond and react to. It found that cloud helps with its resource-management and nimbleness.

“Vicksburg, Mississippi, I would say it’s probably not the IT mecca of the United States,” said Michael Mathews (pictured, right), president and chief executive officer of Mutual Credit Union. “If we go out and we hire all these individuals to help, are they going to become bored?”

Mathews reckoned that the solution was to outsource to a vendor, specifically one that understood the nuances of its business. Earlier this year, Mutual Credit Union was one of four organizations that invested $5 million in the credit union IT specialist ThinkStack, forming it into what’s called a Credit Union Service Organization, or CUSO. Government-regulated CUSOs perform services for credit unions, such as IT.

Mathews and Chris Sachse (pictured, left), chief executive officer of ThinkStack, which won AWS’ “Most Impactful Nonprofit Partner” award, spoke with Natalie Erlich, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. They discussed the business challenges that led to Mutual Credit Union choosing an AWS cloud-based solution and the kinds of services a credit-union-geared, IT services vendor can provide. (* Disclosure below.)

Managed IT services help

“We’re looking at racks of equipment in our IT room, trying to keep everything up to date,” Mathews said. “It had become a full-time job.”

Natural disasters, cybersecurity, pandemic-caused remote working and the aforementioned uncertain future of technology should be added to that, according to Sachse.

“How do you as an organization, generally a small nonprofit organization, build a technology that will allow you to respond and react to whatever the world happens to throw at you?” he asked.

Sachse believes the way to approach digitization requirements, for a credit union, is to move over to a managed IT services company that uses cloud and has a cybersecurity focus.

“We work with credit unions around the country, and many of them are facing similar challenges,” Sachse stated.

Those credit unions need to keep pace with already digitally transformative financial services like mobile app-centric Robinhood, for example, he explained.

How to do it

The approach ThinkStack takes for those looking to digitally transform is to try to “paint a picture” of where the company wants to get to over the next 10 years, followed by figuring a technology foundation to support it.

“That design typically would include some type of public cloud service like AWS,” Sachse said.

Another element that must be introduced is that there needs to be some clear communications between the vendor and customer so the financial services company can understand the complex technical problems. “They’re not technology experts,” he added.

That also includes comprehension of how the investment could impact the credit union and analyzing whether it’s the right investment for them. Because IT investments are significant, the expectations have to be clear, according to Sachse.

Cybersecurity is also a role a vendor should be able to help with: “I can tell you that there’s nothing that would derail a digital transformation of an organization faster than a breach,” Sachse said.

Focusing on core competencies and not IT is Mutual Credit Union’s focus.

“At the end of the day, you know, we’re not IT people, we’re in the financial service business,” Mathews. said. “You can’t build for yourself.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for 2021 Global Public Sector Partner Awards. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE