speaker-0: I'm here with Christopher Jackson. Christopher, what is your role at Creatio?
speaker-1: And I lead the financial services strategy at Creatio. So I work with credit unions, different financial services companies to really help them realize the value of Creatio, which is an AI native business process manager with a focus on CRM and of course different AI agents. So really kind of the entire, you know, member lifecycle ⁓ is is where we focus. So putting that together, doing workshops, you know, business cases, making sure that we're looking at the right areas to to focus on. It's really kind of my day to day umic ratio. And then of course working internally and with our partners to make sure that we have the right grasp on what credit unions need, what's needed in the market and kind of where it's going in the future.
speaker-0: I know Creatio's been around for a bit. Is financial services relatively new for Creatio or is it a a newer focus? You know, what has historically been Creatio's bread and butter?
speaker-1: So Croatio actually started as a business process manager. So it goes back to, you know, workflows and and process automation. It's it's I wouldn't call financial services a new, a new focus, but it is certainly one of, if not our strongest focus. It is the largest part of our business. So obviously we do have a a strong focus there on, you know, development and enhancements. But over time, you know, it's it's gone from, you know, a business process manager to, you know, becoming AI native and really just focusing on different industries. We've we've done that, you know, the the sales and the marketing and the service aspect of that, you know, relatively well, of course. And then now we want to focus on, you know, all these different the differences and the nuances between different industries. So I think in the past few years we have been differentiating between something like financial services and manufacturing and public sector. Different things like that, just to make sure that we are addressing and, you know, accurately defining what needs to have to happen with the product and what's what's valuable in the market.
speaker-0: So knowing that ⁓ Creatio has its pedigree in in business process management and and and that space, would it be fair to say that Creatio its strengths is in the service side of the the application of CRM over some of the marketing automation and sales automation?
speaker-1: I certainly would say that. And I think it goes it goes back to like just like you said, the the the business process management because service cases ultimately, you know, however many there are, there could be 10,000 of them, but but many of them are just processes. They are, hey, we need to do this, this, and that, depending on what the actual request is. So I think it's a good way to look at it. And it's one of the biggest value drivers for credit unions when we start looking at, hey, what can our call center do with this? Or what can the service interview with this, what can our employees, how can how can Creatio help them to put into to place these different workflows and the automation within those workflows, whether that is, you know, b process automation or, you know, getting into AI and and AI agents, all that type of stuff, you know, plays into how do we serve our members as opposed to just looking at it from sales or marketing perspective. Of course, that is part of it. ⁓ I think that when we talk about serving our members, those two things do play into it. It it's not a hey, we're just fielding a request for a request for a new debit card. I think when we talk about serving our members, to me, that is if there's an offer there, we should be, you know, telling them about it. If they have interest in something for different consultation or sales processes, that is part of serving the the membership. So I think that a lot of that plays into it. ⁓ But at the same time I think that those processes that we're doing on a day to day basis is is very important to to keep track.
speaker-0: So speaking about, you know, creatio specifically, who would you say is is an ideal cohort in the credit union movement ⁓ in terms of maybe asset size? And and I hate using that as a a yardstick for, you know, comparing each other against each other. There's I know billion dollar credit unions that are operating like they're two hundred million dollar credit unions. So it's it's very hard to find a single metric to use to measure our ourselves against each other, but it is what it is. So with that caveat, is there a particular credit union asset size that you feel is is in that sweet spot, has, you know, the the capital to invest, has the the staff to help manage and and sort of has that operational efficiency mindset to wrap a very BPM heavy CRM solution. to deploy that at their credit union, where do you see that? Is a fifty million dollar credit union knocking on your door saying, Hey, we we want BPM or is are you is your typical client in the one billion plus range?
speaker-1: think it dips a little bit lower than than one billion. I think that sometha you know, somewhere around about five hundred million is kind of the usually the starting point that we that we typically see and maybe a little bit lower every now and then because and then all the way up to, you know, twenty billion or fifty billion. We we have ⁓ you know credit unions and and other financial services organizations that are that are a much much more than that as well. So I I don't think that there's a specific institution or or asset size that that either does or does not need or can't or or can or cannot use, you know, Creatio as a as a platform. I think that what we're seeing now is that people within that 1 billion to 10 billion or 1 billion to maybe 20 billion range are really trying to, on the, especially on the credit union side, are really trying to catch up with some of the larger banks that have a little bit more, that have more resources, that have the ability or have had the ability in the past to invest a little bit more into certain technologies that may have in the past been deemed as not not necessary, let's say. ⁓ I think it goes from, yeah, we used to think that all we need is a core banking system. And then you add on, you know, an LOS, then you add on your digital banking. So there's always these different pieces being added. And I think CRM and these business process orchestration, you know, platforms, they are becoming foundational to the technology, you know, they're the infrastructure of an organization like that because of, you know, the siloed data and the different things like that. So the more systems you add, the more difficult it is to connect. So I think having that, you know, one, you know, kind of place of of orchestration is is valuable. So I think that back to your original question, that asset range is typically playing a little bit of catch up at this point. but I think that they are starting to recognize the value above and beyond automation. It's not just about automating different processes either. ⁓ I know we say that a good good bit when we talk about workflows and and things, but at the same time I think it's very important to remember that it's more about putting that member profile together and understanding these different things. So that's that's typically where I'm seeing the most interest.
speaker-0: I'm I'm glad you mentioned ⁓ orchestration that came up on our last call and it I think it's one of those it's one of those new buzzwords and and those of us that have sort of been in the industry for a while, certainly those of us that are in the sort of tech area understand what that looks like, but with with all of the AI stuff that's out in the ⁓ in the atmosphere, ⁓ orchestration layer has has become a a a new thing and it's it's a new popular thing, which I think helps folks like us when when we have these, everybody used to double down on RPA and RPA was the new thing and you gotta do RPA. You do BPM and then you do RPA. Now it's about the orchestration layer, the ability to take agentic solutions and do some of the orchestration, make them conductors, create agents that are That'll be able to do things for you. I think it's it's so important to think about the CRM as as sort of the facilitator of that orchestration layer. So we we talked about Creatio, the the genesis or or the pedigree of Creatio being in in the BPM area. How does Creatio handle marketing automation and and managing sales pipelines? You know, I see CRM as kind of a three-headed hydra a little bit. You've got marketing automation, you've got business develop it, sales, and then you've got service. How do you feel that breaks out percentage wise in in in terms of strength? Are you sixty percent strong in the sales area and the remaining two heads get twenty percent apiece? W where do you feel like creatio falls in that? Are you a perfect thirty-three and a third across the board?
speaker-1: I don't know if it's ⁓ exactly, you know, a third across the board. I would say that it it leans a little bit more heavily just because of the the roots as a business process manager that we talked about. I think that that service is certainly somewhere that is a is a little bit more prominent. It also has a little bit I mean, typically it has a little bit higher RY also because you can do two things at once, right? You've got your your productivity gains, but it also can help you to surface, you know, it's gonna help with customer or member satisfaction, different things like that. So I think service is probably I would say it's forty percent maybe, and then sales at at thirty and and marketing at thirty. So if I did the math right, but at the same time So yeah I was trying to do that while I was talking. But ⁓ but no so I think that they're all important. And and one way that I I think about this and it's one of the workshops actually that I that I typically do with credit unions is that you
speaker-0: I'm doing a match my brain too.
speaker-1: Creation is composable. So you have the option of just getting a marketing module. You have the option of just getting sales or just getting service. But when I look at this, all of these things are interconnected. Because let's say that we run a campaign, which you can obviously do using, you know, the marketing module. You can use you can segment your audience. You can segment your member base based on, you know, what kind of campaign you're running. ⁓ you can set up outreach programs, you can track the results of those those but once once you run a campaign, where did those I guess where does the interest go? Right? It it needs to go into something. It can't just say, okay, they're interested and then we have to, you know, leave the platform to how are we going to follow up? How are we going to, you know, to act on that interest? So that runs into your different sales processes. And I know that ⁓ credit unions, really a lot of financial services institutions, they don't like the word sales. And I I don't so I kind of typically call it something like a consultation because that's ultimately what it is. I I think it has a quite a bit of sales similarities because ultimately it is. If someone is interested in something that we have, then we want to talk them through it. But it's more of a consultative approach, especially with credit unions, because of you know the member aspect of that, the personal relationships that we're building. So I think that consultation is a little bit of a better word in my in my mind. So maybe an MSR picks that up. And they they they act on that lead. So they want to follow up and say, hey, member, you know what, you had you you had interest in this. Let's let's talk about it. So let's let's see if we want to move forward with this. Let's see if this is the best option for you, right? There may be another, you know, based on their profile, based on their portfolio, whatever it may be, there may be another option that that fits them a little bit better. So I think that that to me is part of the sales process and it rolls directly from something like a campaign that may be very, very tailored to the member base. through into you know your sales and your your your consultation processes and then all the all the way through to service. So once you you know book that that product, whether it's a, you know, a a an account or a a loan, whatever it may be, a service, then they may need help with that down the line. So we need to know, okay, if they had this for six months, if they had this for five years, that's that that's a big difference. If they have a problem with something in the first month of of booking it, then that's probably not the best member experience. So It's it's I mean it all it goes all the way through and then ultimately when we get to service, I mean that rolls back into our marketing campaigns. Let's say that for example, someone has has put in six different service cases in the last two months. We may not want to include them in a marketing campaign. That's probably not the right time. So they may rub them their own way and that's a bad member experience. So to me, all of these things are interconnected and I think that they should have a they they warrant the same you know, as much focus as each other depending on kind of where your goals as an organization are. But ultimately I think service is is the strongest ⁓ focus. And then, you know, sales and marketing are both obviously there as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. So you touched on the the service sort of informing what happens on the sales and marketing side. And I think that's that's such a great point. And I think I I would say that is a a a potential differentiator that ⁓ in my mind kind of is is a a very important piece because you know the the old adage that it's it's easier to retain an existing member than it is to go out and get one is so so so true. So if you have the opportunity to really excel in the service area and make sure your left hand knows what your right hand is doing, you don't want negative service experiences. I mean, even from the credit union perspective, you don't want those members that have had a negative experience impacting your marketing efforts. You certainly don't want to send them a survey out after they've just submitted six service cases. So I selfishly, that's definitely an area that that a credit union should be aware of and should factor into making some of these decisions. I absolutely think that that even in today's world, I think is so important because we we just have to hang on to these members for dear life because there's so many competitors out there that are way more efficient, have way more capital to invest in leading edge and bleeding edge technologies and systems and So whatever we can do to make the service experience as as efficient and as frictionless as possible, that's a win in my book. To your point about credit union and folks sort of recoiling at the idea of being salespeople, I I a hundred percent agree. I'm I'm on my third credit union in in almost thirty years. And I can tell you every credit union that I've been at, that's always been a challenge. We're not salespeople. And and I like the way you frame it. We we We choose a a very similar way to approach it at first advantage. We call our our member service reps trusted advisors. So it would be it would be accurate to call them trusted salespeople, but to your point, we don't really want to frame it that way. So one of my favorite movies is Glengarry Glenn Ross, and there's that famous scene with Alec Baldwin and talking about the leads and the sales contest and and it just gives you just a very just Guttural, greasy reaction, and it's just so salesy and I love it. But at the same time, you want to be able to give the member service reps, the trusted advisors, the good leads. You want to give them the information that they can use in a human way to provide that consultive advisory sort of services and not make it a smarmy sales pitch. You can, I think you can live in both worlds. The way that I look at Technology in general is a is as an enabler of the things that we do as humans better than computers do. So we emote, we have that EQ, we we have that ability to to empathize and and and have these one-on-one conversations with members. And how great is it to be able to also bring in some intelligence in a non-cree, non-Amazon Instagram feed sort of way. So that they can provide the right service at the right time to the right member at the right point in their lives. So I think that's a huge win. And I think it's something that's often overlooked. I think a lot of times, and this is this is something I want kind of your feedback on is do you find a lot of credit unions engage and decide to go down this CRM path based on marketing automation or business development really kind of put service to the side a little bit. Are you seeing that? Cause that's that's what I've seen a lot. The the business development piece and the marketing automation usually takes the lead. And I'm wondering, especially from an organization that's that's grown up as a BPM centric organization, are you seeing the same thing?
speaker-1: I I have actually it's that's it's a good point. And it's it's kind of s it's kind of surprises me sometimes when we'll we'll be engaging with a credit union, we're talking about these different things and and then ult ultimately we get to the point and we say, Well, what how do we forget about service? We we should talk about that as well. We should talk about the cost and it we should talk about how these how are we servicing the members. Are you using, you know, something like whatever Ring Central like what what type of case management are we are we doing and then they say well we don't really have anything or they have something that they that they don't like and it's it's always surprising that that was not the reason that we were in the conversation in the first place because I think it is forgotten about or kind of maybe maybe takes a backseat to some of those things that they may have heard that they should be doing as opposed to what they really would like to do. So I think it's a good point that the a a focus should absolutely be on service and case management because ultimately that's where you interact with members most. I mean that's where your member base is going to show up. And I know that gaining new members is obviously important. So when we look at business development side, you don't want to forget about that either. But once we have if you have two hundred and fifty thousand members, then they're going to need things on a day to day basis. So I think it's it's certainly it it should be a primary focus when when talking to someone like like Creatio. It we should absolutely have that conversation in the first discussion is that how are we how are we working with servicing and and what are we doing with case management? How can it be better? Because ultimately there's there's lots of different options out there to to increase that that member satisfaction. And I I saw something recently and I'm I don't want to misquote this but or or misattribute this but from one of the main analysts that said that people that focus on the the member experience that that are continuously updating that and keeping tabs on that and making sure that a what is the the member sentiment what is what are the are we are we providing first you know contact resolutions it et cetera et cetera they have twenty five to forty percent higher custom or member satisfaction and I think that's a like a CSAT score. So I think that is it's telling of the the impact that you know, case management and servicing can have on, you know, your current members and and the the you know, the sentiment that they have.
speaker-0: I I so it's it's funny. I it we're probably talking about two different ⁓ studies, but this was was for probably five or six years ago. but Dell Computer did a a survey of incoming calls to their support center and they tracked hold time against first call resolution and then compared the customer satisfaction scores after the call. And they saw a huge correlation in the satisfaction scores going up. On first call resolution, irrespective of the amount of time that they were on hold. So those support customers were willing to sit on hold for 40 minutes, as long as at the end of that 40 minutes, first call resolution and they didn't have to call back. But if you give them a 20 minute hold time and then they get on a call with somebody, they get transferred, they get transferred again, and has somebody has to follow up with them, the scores drop precipitously. So There's a ton of value in measuring first call resolution and and i it's I'm starting to see a lot of information about ⁓ I don't I'm in the same boat as you. I can't remember exactly who. So this is this is information that we can certainly put in the show notes just so people can go out and do the research on their own. But recently, and it I I think it was Cornerstone, but it could have been somebody else, ⁓ had shared that ⁓ the customer satisfaction scores for banks are starting for the first time outperform credit unions. And that it was always our bread and butter. We provide knockout service. But that was before SoFi. That was before Chime. That was before Kraken and Klarna and all of these other fintech competitors that are just taking our lunch because they're so hyper optimized and hyper efficient. And the just the their automation systems are light years ahead of where most credit unions are at. So You can't just sit back and rely on the fact that you're a credit union and you offer knock ⁓ out service. It just doesn't work anymore. So yeah.
speaker-1: Can I give one more kind of analogy on that too? Because I think something you said ⁓ reminded me of of a a talk that I heard a few years ago and it was about like you said, it's because we're not always going to have a first contact resolution. Mm-hmm. A lot of times you you may have to go through certain s stages or certain people. But the the example they gave was Disney and they called in to for something about Disney. Maybe they were going on a trip there and they said they had to talk to three or four different people, but When they would when they would transfer that phone call, the next person knew what the call call was about. They knew what the context was. They knew what the problem was. They knew what the previous person could not do. And then so the the continuity of that communication was kept throughout, you know, that that whole you know interaction. And they said that that made the biggest difference in actually getting to a resolution is that they didn't have to explain that problem every single time. So I think that's another place that having that centralized view of of a member. When they call in, we can say, hey, what was the communication history? Whether you're using an AI agent to, you know, surface that quickly, or whether you are, you know, just looking at your your 360 page, whatever it might be, that you're still getting that context and saying, hey, they just talked to them about about whatever the the issue was. So I have a little bit more context. Hey, are you calling about this? Or, you know, it can be a good thing too, is that hey, we saw that you have an outstanding, you know, authentic marketing, you know, offer, ⁓ is this what you're calling about? So different things like that, being able to quickly view those insights from multiple different areas of the business and multiple different data sources, I think can be it just I mean, you know, that's that's something that I always like too. When you whenever you're calling in somewhere you don't want to have to explain yourself five or six times to to get someone.
speaker-0: And that dri as a consumer, that drives me nuts. That's I hate that more than anything. I you know, to have to explain my story four or five times, you know, between, you know, four or five different phone calls, even if it's on the same phone call, it's still a domain. And it's just I mean, and even from from a business perspective, how long is that member on the phone with four or five different reps from the organization? If you could shave, you know, ten minutes off of that, that's ten minutes that I can spend being a trusted advisor. Or moving on to the next service opportunity or making an outbound call. Or or or or there's way better options there. So so that's great stuff. I'm I'm curious about what you've seen in your interactions with credit unions. ⁓ one of the challenges that I think and and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the challenges that I see is access to some of the data. You know, ⁓ credit unions, I think a lot of them, and I and I think this is is less of an issue at some of the larger credit unions because I think they've they've already dipped their toes in data lakes and data warehouses and and they've got some sort of data later, data layer or at least access to data. ⁓ and I think they're maybe a little bit better prepared ⁓ than some of the smaller credit unions are. But I'm curious, knowing as much as I do about some of the cores and some of the challenges with getting core data and some of the ancillary products and getting access to some of their data, what's your experience been in in tackling those challenges with credit unions and going back to these these service providers to get the data that really underpins everything that we're trying to do here. Yeah.
speaker-1: I mean that is it is a challenge because at at a certain point we are, you know, limited by what let's go to core banking systems as an example. We're limited by what they will give us. ⁓ if there is no access to certain pieces of data, then how are we supposed to get that? So I think there's kind of it's kind of a two part question there. And one of the most important steps in implementation is the data mapping because we need to understand what is coming over, when it's coming over. Is it a batch processor? Is it real time? Do we really need this right now? So being able to understand what is a what is the MVP look like? What is where do we start? And what do we have access to? Because ultimately you may have to go back and forth with a with the the core to figure out how do we get access to this because ultimately we need it. I think that they're getting better. about this, I think some of the newer cores are their understanding that the core is not the end all be all, the only system, you know, in an in a financial services organization. I think that a lot going back probably quite a while now, they they may have been the only system in there. They were they are the system of records. So it is obviously very, very important. But that doesn't mean that they're the only one. So I think the the newer ones are taking the approach that, hey, Yes, we may be a foundational system that is that is tracking everything and that's that we are the system of record, but they're they're understanding that we need to play well with other financial technology too, because ultimately if we don't have the option or the capability, or we just won't provide that information to people, then they're going to leave it. They're going to find one that will allow that access because it's it's limiting the credit union. from serving their some serving their members. I mean, ultimately, if you if you can only do certain things in core, that that information lives there and dies there, then there's got to be a better experience. So it it limits your access to other systems or or the it actually limit it limits the benefits of other systems when they hold that data hostage. So I think that they are moving towards a more open approach. I mean everyone speaks you know the same they they they follow the same protocols now. So it's not about how we're passing the data. It's what data are we passing? What do we have access to? And and when is it being, you know, when is it being passed? Is it being passed in a timely manner? Do we need this? If if someone calls in to check their balance, they it needs to be live. It doesn't need it doesn't need to be real time. We we can't do an overnight thing because they may have gone and spent a bunch of money that morning. So it's it's it's one of those that it's important to map the data properly first to understand what is prioritized what is real time versus patch, like I said, and so on and so forth. So I think that's where I see the biggest I wouldn't call it a challenge necessarily. I think that's the biggest lift in the in the whole kind of piece, but ultimately you're working towards an effective data transition. So I think that's that's something that I typically see and it's something that sometimes adds to the timelines is when we don't map out properly to to begin with, then you can experience delays in implementation because then we have to go back and figure out, okay, well wait, we don't have this information. How are we going to do this process? So something like that.
speaker-0: I I over my years I've seen I think the credit un ⁓ the core providers at at the very least are starting to understand that a little bit more. A lot of the core providers have and I hate to use the same terminology as what you're using. I almost feel like it's an insult, but they have their own baked in CRM ish tools. And to say they're ⁓ middling it at best is is being charitable. And I To credit union's credit, they've they've made do with that for decades. But to the earlier point that you have these things need to be aware of what's happening across the credit union. And a bolt-on, you know, feature inside of a monolithic core stack is just not going to cut it anymore because there's so many things going on outside of the core. ⁓ I think I think the vendors like LOS and and collections and phone systems and stuff. those vendors I think are probably a little bit easier to work with because they they already have to by design. They have to live in the world where they're already outside of the core. They're already outside of that data. So they've they've solved for a lot of that early on because they need to, otherwise they're not going to be able to deliver it. Exactly. So they've got to leg up and and I think some of the core vendors are starting to learn that lesson. I knowing that there are new entrants out there that are cloud first, API enabled. composable, all those really terms that that if I was looking for a core product today would be at the top of my list. They're learning that that is is becoming more and more important over the last five or ten years. But they're just they're slow to market with a lot of this stuff. And some of them still are just fighting tooth and nail. And and I know for a fact that a lot of them still pitch their horrendous CRM platform to credit unions when they are considering those cores. And, you know, I think that does them a disservice because it's putting them in a position of being able to offer what is probably a decent core. But when you start bolting on these legacy outdated, unintegrated, non-agentic, all those buzzwords, when you bolt that on top of the core, it just weighs it down and you end up with this boat anger. So I I I would agree. I think they're we're we're kind of in a renaissance here a little bit. And and I think AI certainly is going to help move this forward. If if you're not in some way, shape, or form mentioning AI on your investor calls or investor days, you're your your stocks gonna you're gonna take a hit if it hasn't already. So they're they're gonna need to figure out a way to exist in the world where there are competitors now that are are that is for them. You know, the way they grew up and the way that they're built. In the same way that SoFi is super hyper optimized for efficiency. They were just built that way. We were built on spreadsheets and general ledgers. So it's hard to to compete in that world when you're to go back to one of the things we said right from the beginning about Creatio being a BPM focused, BPM pedigree ⁓ company and maybe having that sixty percent split on the service side. It's not to say that you're Not driving a Porsche. You are. It's a great product and it's a strong product, but it's probably not the right product if your focus is on marketing automation and sales. ⁓ you're because then you're getting 20 a a good 20% and it's just not fit for purpose. So I I I I your perspective absolutely as you know the representative for Creatio, I like your I like your split. I think it's a good split. But if I'm all about just sending out marketing promos. I'm probably looking elsewhere and and it's probably better that I do because I why wouldn't you just use constant contact or something like that? Because for my organization, if that's all I'm I'm I'm willing to ⁓ move forward with, if I'm not interested in service, if I'm not interested in workflow, probably not going to make sense. So I'm gonna buy the pickup truck to tow my trailer. I'm not gonna buy my Porsche to tow to tow the trailer. That just that'd be silly. But they're both good vehicles.
speaker-1: It would be fun to see though. That's
speaker-0: Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. I'm sure somebody's got ⁓ taken or something like that that they're gonna, you know, the strap an EV V car to the back of a dump trailer or something like that. I'm you know, I I would love to see that on Instagram. So I so you l let's let's talk a little bit more about your experience coming into credit unions and I think we we covered the the credit union market pretty well and some of the challenges. I wanna talk a little bit about sort of the sales cycle. I don't wanna get too deep into the weeds on you know, the back and forth. But I think one area that I think is worth talking about is are credit unions prepared? We we talked early on about making sure that you're thinking about sales and you're thinking about service and you're thinking about ⁓ marketing automation. And we covered data. We know data is important and it's underpinning a lot of this stuff. Do you find that you have to sort of encourage your your prospective clients to do that kind of deep dive into what their current state is so that they can, I don't know, start the journey and have a good footing on the path to success along the way. Or do you feel like ⁓ credit unions that are coming to you specifically are already ready and it's it's just a matter of put getting the shovel in the ground and getting started. Where do you sort of see that today?
speaker-1: I think there's both. ⁓ I think that some a lot of times when we start to engage with credit unions, there's there's an interest or there's a curiosity about, hey, we heard this or hey, we we need to do this. We we kind of know. What I don't think is a common knowledge is the breadth of what is possible. So when we start to look at ⁓ like you said earlier, I think a lot of times somebody will come in and say, We need a marketing solution. But we don't they don't they don't know that that they also have the ability to use something like Creatio for sales and for, you know, consultations and for for service as well. So that's you know, doing that current state activity workshop, that's actually something that I do ⁓ very often with credit unions, is basically look at hey, what are you doing today? What where are the pain points today? And kind of digging into that because a lot of times you'll find that in in some organizations, maybe the marketing team doesn't underst doesn't know that the that the MSRs have a or don't have this ability into this and it's a simple fix sometimes. Sometimes it's not, or sometimes it's a wish list item, or that the that the call center doesn't have this information. Or if we did one thing better, then this would make someone's lives easier. So I think going through that current state is is extremely important because it opens up areas that we really need to focus. So that's typically where I start with it with with some of the workshops that I do is let's walk through what you're doing. Then we look at, okay, here's how, you know, creatio fits into these things. So let's talk through, you know, the full process and make it and and turn this into a future state. Let's look at where you want to improve. Where are those pain points that we can address and make this better? And maybe there's not any pain points in something like marketing, but there are in the in a branch ⁓ in the branch operation some something something like that that you wouldn't really know unless you start to dig into the actual day to day and the actual processes that are happening instead of just looking at it as hey we're just going to get another technology that does th these five bullet points. So I think putting it into perspective of this is going to be a part of our day to day lives in our jobs is is extremely important. And to that point, We now AI obviously is is everywhere and it's it's always good to look at a future process as if you are redoing it. That doesn't mean that you're doing everything wrong and that it doesn't mean that you're going to transform everything, but we have to look at it as a new process. Otherwise we're just going to be putting AI on top of a process that's already potentially broken or that's that's not as you know, it's not best practice, whatever it might be. We don't want to just drop AI on top of it. You want to build a process that includes AI where you need it or includes these different capabilities of, you know, a CRM as you go. So it's not that we are reinventing the wheel necessarily. It's that we are, you know, redesigning it, let's say. Yep.
speaker-0: I was on a podcast recently and I don't know if you're familiar with I Love Lucy, the old sitcom, but there is a there's an episode where Lucy and Ethel are working in a chocolate factory and they've there's an assembly line that comes by and there's chocolates and they have to take pick take it to chocolate and wrap it and put it back on the assembly line and it goes into another room. So the point that I made is could we replace Lucy with a robot? Yes, we absolutely could. So we have a robot with, you know, let's say just say three fingers and it picks up the chocolate and it's got another hand that wraps it and puts it down. So will that be faster? Yeah. So the robot will just do this faster than Lucy can. Lucy's stuffing the chocolates in her shirt and her hat and she's they're eating them. So the robot can do that, but you're still basing it on the human process that was designed in this case in the nineteen fifties. So Does that make sense? Is that the right way to apply that technology? It's not. If you look at Hershey's or you look at a a major chocolate manufacturer, they have these massive machines that that drop thousands of pieces of chocolate right into a wrapper and they wrap the heat transfer and j done. And you know, so there's ten thousand pieces of chocolate that's done in in a matter of seconds. If you use the robot, you got the the robot's gonna get arthritis in its elbow and you gotta replace the fingers and they wear out and all that kind of stuff. So That whenever somebody talks about AI and applying technology, I always say go back to the process. And for Creatio, this is this is where you guys were raised in business process automation. Don't automate, don't improve a process that shouldn't exist. Instead of doing the individual finger thing, let's just let's make 10,000 pieces of candy at once and you know ship them right out the door. So I 100% agree with you. I think it is so important to really look at the processes before you apply technology, automation, RPA, AI, or even CRM. I think those two things really kind of go together. And I always see the the process improvement piece as foundational to any effort that certainly touches members, touches data, touches any of that stuff. And ⁓ if you don't, you're gonna end up with a robotic Lucy that's just, you know, that's breaking all the time because you're wearing a stupid thing out. So
speaker-1: I mean, and that to that point it's ⁓ you I mean, the robot would probably eat less of the the chocolates, which is but I so that's a maybe that's a good thing. So you're you're cutting down on, you know, unnecessary activities. That's yeah, yeah, less waste than I do. I want to frame it that way, but yes, absolutely. But at the same time, I mean, th there are certain things that AI is not built to do. W that's the way that we typically look at it, is that humans are, you know, built you know, built to
speaker-0: That's waste.
speaker-1: For lack of better word to say, to do certain things. They're better at certain things. So if you're doing something like a taste test with chocolates, robots not going to be able to do that. It's not gonna be it's not gonna be able to taste the that one of these is off, whatever it might be. But a human can. So when it comes to having conversations with members or tough conversations sometimes, or helping them to kind of reading into the nuance of a situation, that's something the humans should absolutely be a part of. And I know that we automation is through the roof now, whether that's, you know, RPA or whether that's AI, and when we have what we call autonomous agents. And that that's to me a little bit misleading sometimes because a the vast majority of times there's still a human in the loop and you still want them to be in the loop because hey, we need that actual I always find myself saying a second set of eyes, but it's really a first set of human eyes. Yeah. On some of these, on some of these processes just to make sure, hey, this is doing it the right way. Mm-hmm. It is a sen some of these things are sensitive conversations, but there are other processes that are lower stakes, let's say, that that are really the bread and butter of something like an AI agent or ⁓ you know, an automated process. So I think there's finding when you go to redesign some of those processes, it's pretty obvious which ones you are a little bit less or you're a little bit more hesitant to automate the full thing. That's where you want a human in the loop. And that's totally fine if you're still improving that process using the capabilities and new technology that you have, but you're also keeping that personalization. You're keeping that human there in case so that we can treat the process with the respect of design.
speaker-0: Absolutely. I I love that you said human in the loop there. The ⁓ one of the one of the things that I hear a lot whenever the subject of CRM is brought up, I a a lot of people instantly think about the the big fish in the pond, the big whale and the amount of human resources required to support a massive, massive you almost need a force of people to support some of those products. So that that is always a concern. And a lot of times I I've run into executives that do that calculus in their head instantly. They think, all right, I need a team of five people to support this massive deployment of this super complex CRM product that's gonna require us partnering with a third party that's got a a fleet of developers that are specialized in and how to live in this this world and and everything is going to be about this particular product or service. So So the cost benefit analysis is instantly done and it's we ⁓ nobody likes CRM, nobody wants to do it. So ⁓ I know Creatio, one of the one of the things that that you are are are pushing or or one of the things that's that's kind of foundational to your product is the low code, no code approach. And and I know there are a lot of vendors out there doing similar things and ⁓ and I'm curious how how How should credit unions approach the idea of getting into low code, no code with something that is handling a lot of member data, that is going to be in front of all the colleagues? We call our employees colleagues, that's going to be in front of the colleagues, and then potentially in some cases, depending on how you deploy this, may even be in front of members. So how do you how do you weigh the risks associated with that against the idea that it may be? one of the reasons why you're there in the first place, because the idea is now you don't need to have a fleet of developers ready to customize and deploy these agents or tools or workflows inside of your product. So how do you how do you weigh that and how do you have that communication with credit unions early on?
speaker-1: I think that's one of the main it's one of the biggest values that we can provide is enabling business users and subject matter experts to to essentially build the system in a way that works for them. It's because of course we have out of the box credit union workflows and that's totally fine. But that may not fit every credit union. It may not fit with the way that that you're doing business. So in traditional back in whatever a few years ago that with when you didn't have no code options, you're going and getting in, putting it on a roadmap with an IT team or playing the telephone game, which is even worse. To me, that's a bigger problem is that you're not just waiting on a s a fix or a you know enhancement or a change to the to the systems that you have to use every day. You're not just waiting on it is that they don't understand what you're asking for. So then you end up with a a a different incorrect process or function of of the system and it just kind of snowballs because then and then you lose adoption. You lose users because they're like, hey, this isn't working for me. This is not what I want. So it's adding no value. So I think one of the main benefits of no code is that you ⁓ you obviously still want a center of excellence, but it allows the business users, the people that are actually using this to go in and build what they would like to build or Change what they would like to change to fit the actual day-to-day lives that they're living. And I think they ⁓ go back to kind of a center of excellence there. It's not that you don't want IT involved with that, because of course, when you're establishing integrations or something like that, then maybe this is something that that they do need to be involved in. Or you could have someone that is designated administrator that is going in and making changes for people. But when you have at least input from the from the people from the front lines, from the people that are in it every single day. That's what's really valuable when it comes to building out something that's going to work. ⁓ hey, I need this field. I want to know this about these people. So you go in and you drag and drop that field onto the screen. That's huge compared to going in and having to know how to code to make that change. So obviously you limit that ability to to certain people. But that doesn't mean that you don't create that committee or whatever you want to call it, center of excellence, that that does give input and feedback and that constant improvement of of usability to an extent. Because that's ultimately how you drive adoption is to provide something to people that is valuable to them, not just by, hey, you've got this tool, use it if you want to. You want people to say, Hey, I love this. Can we do this? And that's where ⁓ again, I mean, going like one step further, you when when you enable them to provide ideas and insights and and they actually show up in a system, you know, that's where they start to get other ideas. Hey, can we do this? Can we do that? And then you can really, you know, expand your your usage of it to fit all sorts of different things because it goes back to the business process management piece is that you can build HR operations in it. You can build training modules in it. So it's it's those types of things that really kind of enable the broader credit union and all sorts of different teams to put their activities in there as well. So this kind of enables creativity if you wanted to simplify that.
speaker-0: So you I I like that you called out you're not gonna have tellers creating agents and workflows and things like that. I I I would agree with that. I think there's probably a a business analyst role that are probably ideal because they they have the business knowledge about w what the internal process is, where data needs to flow, which people need to to do what. They may not have They may not know how to write SQL. They may not understand JSON or Java or anything like that, but they can certainly drag and drop information and put together a a fairly basic workflow that that not only mirrors the existing business process, but is also they're smart enough to understand the flow of data and the flow of knowledge and the flow of work. So yeah, I I think I like the way you framed it too. ⁓ what did you call it? ⁓ operational, not operational excellence. ⁓ yeah.
speaker-1: Center of excellence.
speaker-0: I love I I love that. I think that's a great way of really kind of framing the group of people that are empowered to look within your organization to find ways to apply things like low code, node code tools to the work they already do.
speaker-1: Yeah. And I mean, to your point there, that the center of excellence is typically made up of, let's say, and IT specialists, and then you have a business analyst. So you have both sides of this because maybe the business analyst knows that we need to build a let's just call it a branch process that they've heard from the the subject matter experts at the branch. So they can build that, but maybe we're missing a piece of information from core. So back to our earlier conversation. Then They may not know how to adjust an integration of connection to to add that piece of information, but the IT person does. So you're basically minimizing the the the responsibilities of IT to very focused things that you need to do. And they are, you know, much rarer than having to just adjust a process or something like that. So being able to offload some of those IT resources, I'm not gonna get into that, but it's I mean, it indirectly opens them up to, you know, addressing some other tech that they may have. So that that may have nothing to do with a CRM or whatever it is. So I think there's lots of benefits to being able to empower the business users to have input and actually go in and change some of these things for for what they need. ⁓
speaker-0: Absolutely. What so thinking about your engagements with credit unions over the, you know, the last few years, and and you certainly don't need to name individual credit unions, but if there's a credit union that you would sort of hold up as a as a model client, a credit union that came to you guys ready to go right out of the box, and our super users are using, yeah, they're your your your perfect reference client. What's one thing that they're doing that you wish other clients can or would do before they pick up the phone to have that conversation with you in preparation for the next steps.
speaker-1: think that it is I I'll go back to somewhat of an earlier answer as well. Understanding where they want to focus. Under understanding what the scope is. That doesn't mean that that can't change or let's say expand because hey, maybe they learned something that that we could do that they didn't know previously. That's totally fine. But I think having an idea of what they're looking for I think is is very important. So talking to the different business lines. Sometimes to give an example, sometimes we have talked to credit unions that do commercial lending, consumer lending, and in mortgage lending. And then only one business line is aware that we're that of that because they heard they were a little bit louder and they say, Hey, we need something like creatio here. And then the commercial side says, Hey, well, we do too, right? So I think just maybe establishing that I don't want to call it a committee because it's a bit less formal than that, but establishing those those leaders of the different business lines to understand what are we what do you guys need? Because when we're looking at an enterprise technology and solution, it is going to touch all these different areas, marketing, commercial lending, you know, sales. I all those different things are are involved, call centers. So I think that really figuring out where we can help ⁓ i is big. And of course we would help to do that. That's what we want. That's what we're there for, is to assist with with identifying those things. But I think understanding where the needs are helps to to have a little bit more valuable discussion from the beginning as opposed to, hey, tell us what, you know, about what creation does or something like that. Mm-hmm.
speaker-0: How how effective have you been? ⁓ let me rephrase that. Are you having, are you finding it's difficult to get out in front of credit unions? I I became aware of Creatio because I was at a very small conference in in Michigan Michigan? No, Ohio, in in February. And I I met ⁓ some of the folks from Creatio there. And ⁓ that that is really how I came across Creatio. Are you having a hard time getting in front of credit unions? Or are you where where do you see the challenges in engaging with more credit union clients in the future?
speaker-1: I don't find that it's difficult to get in front of them because I think that it is starting to become more common and credit unions are now recognizing the need for something like this. Because as you said, member relationships are the the priority for for credit unions. And I think that unfortunately, if banks have more resources than they can in the past, they've had more to invest into something like a a CRM. So But when realistically that's what credit unions were are all about in general. So I think that w they're starting to kind of recognize that hey, this is more than just, like you said, a sales pipeline and marketing tool. This is actually benefiting the members and the the service aspect of that too. So I think that there's much more interest now. But I think that, you know, we we obviously are in a market with some very, very, very large players ⁓ which have ⁓ the name recognition that ⁓ we don't necessarily have yet. So a lot of what what I do is really try to get the word out. I mean, whether that is conferences, whether that is talking to to people, things like this too. So I think it's it's one thing that we are certainly working on, but we did grow significantly last year in the financial services space. ⁓ just sixty percent year over years. And you have your own conference. Yeah, and then credit and exactly it in our own conference, which was was very, very large this year too. We just got done with it actually a couple weeks ago. And yeah, so I mean I think just getting out and and really talking to people and understanding that the creation many, many, many times, ⁓ I would say say ninety percent of the time fits better than something that some of the larger players offer because we are focused on the five hundred million to the the twenty billion. credit unions as opposed to these much larger solutions that are, you know, much more expensive and so on and so forth. So I think that's one of the the main the the value drivers there that the interest that we get is because we are obviously more affordable and can do everything that that those people are doing too. So yeah. So it's been interesting and it's been great. So we're still still working on it.
speaker-0: Well, this was great, Chris. ⁓ th like I said, this was the second one I've done so far with this ⁓ CRM topic and we've got one more to do and I'm really looking forward to the the round table with with all of you guys on the call 'cause ⁓ I I it I did not design it this way, but it sort of worked out so that, you know, the first one was very sales and marketing automation focused. The second one is a bit more service focused. And the third one I is a little bit of a wild card for me. So we're I'm really looking forward to that that battle royale that we're gonna set up in a couple of weeks, whatever that looks like. I I toyed around with the idea of making this sort of a relaxed everybody is sipping on a brandy or whiskey or something like that. But then I then I thought about it. I said, after 30 minutes or so, that might not go well. We've got a bunch of competitors sitting around the table having some drinks and conversations. That that may we may have to use the bloop button a couple of times on that one.
speaker-1: You can't say it wouldn't be interesting though.
speaker-0: Absolutely. Maybe we'll toy around with that. Maybe we'll workshop that one a little bit and we'll record it and see what happens. If it's safe, we'll release it. If not, we'll do it again and we'll we'll make it a ⁓ a a PG thirteen or a PG ⁓ rating instead. So but this was awesome. This was great. This is ⁓ I I love the conversation, I love the information. I I really think Creatio's got a an interesting solution. I love the pedigree in in the the the BPM world. I'm a process nerd. I love process. I'm six Sigma certified and I so I love being efficient. ⁓ so again, this was great. We're gonna, you know, we'll get together in again in a couple of weeks with some of our other friends. ⁓ but ⁓ I really appreciate your time today.
speaker-1: No, thanks for having me. It's been great. And it's enjoy television too. Looking forward to
speaker-0: Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.
speaker-1: And I lead the financial services strategy at Creatio. So I work with credit unions, different financial services companies to really help them realize the value of Creatio, which is an AI native business process manager with a focus on CRM and of course different AI agents. So really kind of the entire, you know, member lifecycle ⁓ is is where we focus. So putting that together, doing workshops, you know, business cases, making sure that we're looking at the right areas to to focus on. It's really kind of my day to day umic ratio. And then of course working internally and with our partners to make sure that we have the right grasp on what credit unions need, what's needed in the market and kind of where it's going in the future.
speaker-0: I know Creatio's been around for a bit. Is financial services relatively new for Creatio or is it a a newer focus? You know, what has historically been Creatio's bread and butter?
speaker-1: So Croatio actually started as a business process manager. So it goes back to, you know, workflows and and process automation. It's it's I wouldn't call financial services a new, a new focus, but it is certainly one of, if not our strongest focus. It is the largest part of our business. So obviously we do have a a strong focus there on, you know, development and enhancements. But over time, you know, it's it's gone from, you know, a business process manager to, you know, becoming AI native and really just focusing on different industries. We've we've done that, you know, the the sales and the marketing and the service aspect of that, you know, relatively well, of course. And then now we want to focus on, you know, all these different the differences and the nuances between different industries. So I think in the past few years we have been differentiating between something like financial services and manufacturing and public sector. Different things like that, just to make sure that we are addressing and, you know, accurately defining what needs to have to happen with the product and what's what's valuable in the market.
speaker-0: So knowing that ⁓ Creatio has its pedigree in in business process management and and and that space, would it be fair to say that Creatio its strengths is in the service side of the the application of CRM over some of the marketing automation and sales automation?
speaker-1: I certainly would say that. And I think it goes it goes back to like just like you said, the the the business process management because service cases ultimately, you know, however many there are, there could be 10,000 of them, but but many of them are just processes. They are, hey, we need to do this, this, and that, depending on what the actual request is. So I think it's a good way to look at it. And it's one of the biggest value drivers for credit unions when we start looking at, hey, what can our call center do with this? Or what can the service interview with this, what can our employees, how can how can Creatio help them to put into to place these different workflows and the automation within those workflows, whether that is, you know, b process automation or, you know, getting into AI and and AI agents, all that type of stuff, you know, plays into how do we serve our members as opposed to just looking at it from sales or marketing perspective. Of course, that is part of it. ⁓ I think that when we talk about serving our members, those two things do play into it. It it's not a hey, we're just fielding a request for a request for a new debit card. I think when we talk about serving our members, to me, that is if there's an offer there, we should be, you know, telling them about it. If they have interest in something for different consultation or sales processes, that is part of serving the the membership. So I think that a lot of that plays into it. ⁓ But at the same time I think that those processes that we're doing on a day to day basis is is very important to to keep track.
speaker-0: So speaking about, you know, creatio specifically, who would you say is is an ideal cohort in the credit union movement ⁓ in terms of maybe asset size? And and I hate using that as a a yardstick for, you know, comparing each other against each other. There's I know billion dollar credit unions that are operating like they're two hundred million dollar credit unions. So it's it's very hard to find a single metric to use to measure our ourselves against each other, but it is what it is. So with that caveat, is there a particular credit union asset size that you feel is is in that sweet spot, has, you know, the the capital to invest, has the the staff to help manage and and sort of has that operational efficiency mindset to wrap a very BPM heavy CRM solution. to deploy that at their credit union, where do you see that? Is a fifty million dollar credit union knocking on your door saying, Hey, we we want BPM or is are you is your typical client in the one billion plus range?
speaker-1: think it dips a little bit lower than than one billion. I think that sometha you know, somewhere around about five hundred million is kind of the usually the starting point that we that we typically see and maybe a little bit lower every now and then because and then all the way up to, you know, twenty billion or fifty billion. We we have ⁓ you know credit unions and and other financial services organizations that are that are a much much more than that as well. So I I don't think that there's a specific institution or or asset size that that either does or does not need or can't or or can or cannot use, you know, Creatio as a as a platform. I think that what we're seeing now is that people within that 1 billion to 10 billion or 1 billion to maybe 20 billion range are really trying to, on the, especially on the credit union side, are really trying to catch up with some of the larger banks that have a little bit more, that have more resources, that have the ability or have had the ability in the past to invest a little bit more into certain technologies that may have in the past been deemed as not not necessary, let's say. ⁓ I think it goes from, yeah, we used to think that all we need is a core banking system. And then you add on, you know, an LOS, then you add on your digital banking. So there's always these different pieces being added. And I think CRM and these business process orchestration, you know, platforms, they are becoming foundational to the technology, you know, they're the infrastructure of an organization like that because of, you know, the siloed data and the different things like that. So the more systems you add, the more difficult it is to connect. So I think having that, you know, one, you know, kind of place of of orchestration is is valuable. So I think that back to your original question, that asset range is typically playing a little bit of catch up at this point. but I think that they are starting to recognize the value above and beyond automation. It's not just about automating different processes either. ⁓ I know we say that a good good bit when we talk about workflows and and things, but at the same time I think it's very important to remember that it's more about putting that member profile together and understanding these different things. So that's that's typically where I'm seeing the most interest.
speaker-0: I'm I'm glad you mentioned ⁓ orchestration that came up on our last call and it I think it's one of those it's one of those new buzzwords and and those of us that have sort of been in the industry for a while, certainly those of us that are in the sort of tech area understand what that looks like, but with with all of the AI stuff that's out in the ⁓ in the atmosphere, ⁓ orchestration layer has has become a a a new thing and it's it's a new popular thing, which I think helps folks like us when when we have these, everybody used to double down on RPA and RPA was the new thing and you gotta do RPA. You do BPM and then you do RPA. Now it's about the orchestration layer, the ability to take agentic solutions and do some of the orchestration, make them conductors, create agents that are That'll be able to do things for you. I think it's it's so important to think about the CRM as as sort of the facilitator of that orchestration layer. So we we talked about Creatio, the the genesis or or the pedigree of Creatio being in in the BPM area. How does Creatio handle marketing automation and and managing sales pipelines? You know, I see CRM as kind of a three-headed hydra a little bit. You've got marketing automation, you've got business develop it, sales, and then you've got service. How do you feel that breaks out percentage wise in in in terms of strength? Are you sixty percent strong in the sales area and the remaining two heads get twenty percent apiece? W where do you feel like creatio falls in that? Are you a perfect thirty-three and a third across the board?
speaker-1: I don't know if it's ⁓ exactly, you know, a third across the board. I would say that it it leans a little bit more heavily just because of the the roots as a business process manager that we talked about. I think that that service is certainly somewhere that is a is a little bit more prominent. It also has a little bit I mean, typically it has a little bit higher RY also because you can do two things at once, right? You've got your your productivity gains, but it also can help you to surface, you know, it's gonna help with customer or member satisfaction, different things like that. So I think service is probably I would say it's forty percent maybe, and then sales at at thirty and and marketing at thirty. So if I did the math right, but at the same time So yeah I was trying to do that while I was talking. But ⁓ but no so I think that they're all important. And and one way that I I think about this and it's one of the workshops actually that I that I typically do with credit unions is that you
speaker-0: I'm doing a match my brain too.
speaker-1: Creation is composable. So you have the option of just getting a marketing module. You have the option of just getting sales or just getting service. But when I look at this, all of these things are interconnected. Because let's say that we run a campaign, which you can obviously do using, you know, the marketing module. You can use you can segment your audience. You can segment your member base based on, you know, what kind of campaign you're running. ⁓ you can set up outreach programs, you can track the results of those those but once once you run a campaign, where did those I guess where does the interest go? Right? It it needs to go into something. It can't just say, okay, they're interested and then we have to, you know, leave the platform to how are we going to follow up? How are we going to, you know, to act on that interest? So that runs into your different sales processes. And I know that ⁓ credit unions, really a lot of financial services institutions, they don't like the word sales. And I I don't so I kind of typically call it something like a consultation because that's ultimately what it is. I I think it has a quite a bit of sales similarities because ultimately it is. If someone is interested in something that we have, then we want to talk them through it. But it's more of a consultative approach, especially with credit unions, because of you know the member aspect of that, the personal relationships that we're building. So I think that consultation is a little bit of a better word in my in my mind. So maybe an MSR picks that up. And they they they act on that lead. So they want to follow up and say, hey, member, you know what, you had you you had interest in this. Let's let's talk about it. So let's let's see if we want to move forward with this. Let's see if this is the best option for you, right? There may be another, you know, based on their profile, based on their portfolio, whatever it may be, there may be another option that that fits them a little bit better. So I think that that to me is part of the sales process and it rolls directly from something like a campaign that may be very, very tailored to the member base. through into you know your sales and your your your consultation processes and then all the all the way through to service. So once you you know book that that product, whether it's a, you know, a a an account or a a loan, whatever it may be, a service, then they may need help with that down the line. So we need to know, okay, if they had this for six months, if they had this for five years, that's that that's a big difference. If they have a problem with something in the first month of of booking it, then that's probably not the best member experience. So It's it's I mean it all it goes all the way through and then ultimately when we get to service, I mean that rolls back into our marketing campaigns. Let's say that for example, someone has has put in six different service cases in the last two months. We may not want to include them in a marketing campaign. That's probably not the right time. So they may rub them their own way and that's a bad member experience. So to me, all of these things are interconnected and I think that they should have a they they warrant the same you know, as much focus as each other depending on kind of where your goals as an organization are. But ultimately I think service is is the strongest ⁓ focus. And then, you know, sales and marketing are both obviously there as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. So you touched on the the service sort of informing what happens on the sales and marketing side. And I think that's that's such a great point. And I think I I would say that is a a a potential differentiator that ⁓ in my mind kind of is is a a very important piece because you know the the old adage that it's it's easier to retain an existing member than it is to go out and get one is so so so true. So if you have the opportunity to really excel in the service area and make sure your left hand knows what your right hand is doing, you don't want negative service experiences. I mean, even from the credit union perspective, you don't want those members that have had a negative experience impacting your marketing efforts. You certainly don't want to send them a survey out after they've just submitted six service cases. So I selfishly, that's definitely an area that that a credit union should be aware of and should factor into making some of these decisions. I absolutely think that that even in today's world, I think is so important because we we just have to hang on to these members for dear life because there's so many competitors out there that are way more efficient, have way more capital to invest in leading edge and bleeding edge technologies and systems and So whatever we can do to make the service experience as as efficient and as frictionless as possible, that's a win in my book. To your point about credit union and folks sort of recoiling at the idea of being salespeople, I I a hundred percent agree. I'm I'm on my third credit union in in almost thirty years. And I can tell you every credit union that I've been at, that's always been a challenge. We're not salespeople. And and I like the way you frame it. We we We choose a a very similar way to approach it at first advantage. We call our our member service reps trusted advisors. So it would be it would be accurate to call them trusted salespeople, but to your point, we don't really want to frame it that way. So one of my favorite movies is Glengarry Glenn Ross, and there's that famous scene with Alec Baldwin and talking about the leads and the sales contest and and it just gives you just a very just Guttural, greasy reaction, and it's just so salesy and I love it. But at the same time, you want to be able to give the member service reps, the trusted advisors, the good leads. You want to give them the information that they can use in a human way to provide that consultive advisory sort of services and not make it a smarmy sales pitch. You can, I think you can live in both worlds. The way that I look at Technology in general is a is as an enabler of the things that we do as humans better than computers do. So we emote, we have that EQ, we we have that ability to to empathize and and and have these one-on-one conversations with members. And how great is it to be able to also bring in some intelligence in a non-cree, non-Amazon Instagram feed sort of way. So that they can provide the right service at the right time to the right member at the right point in their lives. So I think that's a huge win. And I think it's something that's often overlooked. I think a lot of times, and this is this is something I want kind of your feedback on is do you find a lot of credit unions engage and decide to go down this CRM path based on marketing automation or business development really kind of put service to the side a little bit. Are you seeing that? Cause that's that's what I've seen a lot. The the business development piece and the marketing automation usually takes the lead. And I'm wondering, especially from an organization that's that's grown up as a BPM centric organization, are you seeing the same thing?
speaker-1: I I have actually it's that's it's a good point. And it's it's kind of s it's kind of surprises me sometimes when we'll we'll be engaging with a credit union, we're talking about these different things and and then ult ultimately we get to the point and we say, Well, what how do we forget about service? We we should talk about that as well. We should talk about the cost and it we should talk about how these how are we servicing the members. Are you using, you know, something like whatever Ring Central like what what type of case management are we are we doing and then they say well we don't really have anything or they have something that they that they don't like and it's it's always surprising that that was not the reason that we were in the conversation in the first place because I think it is forgotten about or kind of maybe maybe takes a backseat to some of those things that they may have heard that they should be doing as opposed to what they really would like to do. So I think it's a good point that the a a focus should absolutely be on service and case management because ultimately that's where you interact with members most. I mean that's where your member base is going to show up. And I know that gaining new members is obviously important. So when we look at business development side, you don't want to forget about that either. But once we have if you have two hundred and fifty thousand members, then they're going to need things on a day to day basis. So I think it's it's certainly it it should be a primary focus when when talking to someone like like Creatio. It we should absolutely have that conversation in the first discussion is that how are we how are we working with servicing and and what are we doing with case management? How can it be better? Because ultimately there's there's lots of different options out there to to increase that that member satisfaction. And I I saw something recently and I'm I don't want to misquote this but or or misattribute this but from one of the main analysts that said that people that focus on the the member experience that that are continuously updating that and keeping tabs on that and making sure that a what is the the member sentiment what is what are the are we are we providing first you know contact resolutions it et cetera et cetera they have twenty five to forty percent higher custom or member satisfaction and I think that's a like a CSAT score. So I think that is it's telling of the the impact that you know, case management and servicing can have on, you know, your current members and and the the you know, the sentiment that they have.
speaker-0: I I so it's it's funny. I it we're probably talking about two different ⁓ studies, but this was was for probably five or six years ago. but Dell Computer did a a survey of incoming calls to their support center and they tracked hold time against first call resolution and then compared the customer satisfaction scores after the call. And they saw a huge correlation in the satisfaction scores going up. On first call resolution, irrespective of the amount of time that they were on hold. So those support customers were willing to sit on hold for 40 minutes, as long as at the end of that 40 minutes, first call resolution and they didn't have to call back. But if you give them a 20 minute hold time and then they get on a call with somebody, they get transferred, they get transferred again, and has somebody has to follow up with them, the scores drop precipitously. So There's a ton of value in measuring first call resolution and and i it's I'm starting to see a lot of information about ⁓ I don't I'm in the same boat as you. I can't remember exactly who. So this is this is information that we can certainly put in the show notes just so people can go out and do the research on their own. But recently, and it I I think it was Cornerstone, but it could have been somebody else, ⁓ had shared that ⁓ the customer satisfaction scores for banks are starting for the first time outperform credit unions. And that it was always our bread and butter. We provide knockout service. But that was before SoFi. That was before Chime. That was before Kraken and Klarna and all of these other fintech competitors that are just taking our lunch because they're so hyper optimized and hyper efficient. And the just the their automation systems are light years ahead of where most credit unions are at. So You can't just sit back and rely on the fact that you're a credit union and you offer knock ⁓ out service. It just doesn't work anymore. So yeah.
speaker-1: Can I give one more kind of analogy on that too? Because I think something you said ⁓ reminded me of of a a talk that I heard a few years ago and it was about like you said, it's because we're not always going to have a first contact resolution. Mm-hmm. A lot of times you you may have to go through certain s stages or certain people. But the the example they gave was Disney and they called in to for something about Disney. Maybe they were going on a trip there and they said they had to talk to three or four different people, but When they would when they would transfer that phone call, the next person knew what the call call was about. They knew what the context was. They knew what the problem was. They knew what the previous person could not do. And then so the the continuity of that communication was kept throughout, you know, that that whole you know interaction. And they said that that made the biggest difference in actually getting to a resolution is that they didn't have to explain that problem every single time. So I think that's another place that having that centralized view of of a member. When they call in, we can say, hey, what was the communication history? Whether you're using an AI agent to, you know, surface that quickly, or whether you are, you know, just looking at your your 360 page, whatever it might be, that you're still getting that context and saying, hey, they just talked to them about about whatever the the issue was. So I have a little bit more context. Hey, are you calling about this? Or, you know, it can be a good thing too, is that hey, we saw that you have an outstanding, you know, authentic marketing, you know, offer, ⁓ is this what you're calling about? So different things like that, being able to quickly view those insights from multiple different areas of the business and multiple different data sources, I think can be it just I mean, you know, that's that's something that I always like too. When you whenever you're calling in somewhere you don't want to have to explain yourself five or six times to to get someone.
speaker-0: And that dri as a consumer, that drives me nuts. That's I hate that more than anything. I you know, to have to explain my story four or five times, you know, between, you know, four or five different phone calls, even if it's on the same phone call, it's still a domain. And it's just I mean, and even from from a business perspective, how long is that member on the phone with four or five different reps from the organization? If you could shave, you know, ten minutes off of that, that's ten minutes that I can spend being a trusted advisor. Or moving on to the next service opportunity or making an outbound call. Or or or or there's way better options there. So so that's great stuff. I'm I'm curious about what you've seen in your interactions with credit unions. ⁓ one of the challenges that I think and and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the challenges that I see is access to some of the data. You know, ⁓ credit unions, I think a lot of them, and I and I think this is is less of an issue at some of the larger credit unions because I think they've they've already dipped their toes in data lakes and data warehouses and and they've got some sort of data later, data layer or at least access to data. ⁓ and I think they're maybe a little bit better prepared ⁓ than some of the smaller credit unions are. But I'm curious, knowing as much as I do about some of the cores and some of the challenges with getting core data and some of the ancillary products and getting access to some of their data, what's your experience been in in tackling those challenges with credit unions and going back to these these service providers to get the data that really underpins everything that we're trying to do here. Yeah.
speaker-1: I mean that is it is a challenge because at at a certain point we are, you know, limited by what let's go to core banking systems as an example. We're limited by what they will give us. ⁓ if there is no access to certain pieces of data, then how are we supposed to get that? So I think there's kind of it's kind of a two part question there. And one of the most important steps in implementation is the data mapping because we need to understand what is coming over, when it's coming over. Is it a batch processor? Is it real time? Do we really need this right now? So being able to understand what is a what is the MVP look like? What is where do we start? And what do we have access to? Because ultimately you may have to go back and forth with a with the the core to figure out how do we get access to this because ultimately we need it. I think that they're getting better. about this, I think some of the newer cores are their understanding that the core is not the end all be all, the only system, you know, in an in a financial services organization. I think that a lot going back probably quite a while now, they they may have been the only system in there. They were they are the system of records. So it is obviously very, very important. But that doesn't mean that they're the only one. So I think the the newer ones are taking the approach that, hey, Yes, we may be a foundational system that is that is tracking everything and that's that we are the system of record, but they're they're understanding that we need to play well with other financial technology too, because ultimately if we don't have the option or the capability, or we just won't provide that information to people, then they're going to leave it. They're going to find one that will allow that access because it's it's limiting the credit union. from serving their some serving their members. I mean, ultimately, if you if you can only do certain things in core, that that information lives there and dies there, then there's got to be a better experience. So it it limits your access to other systems or or the it actually limit it limits the benefits of other systems when they hold that data hostage. So I think that they are moving towards a more open approach. I mean everyone speaks you know the same they they they follow the same protocols now. So it's not about how we're passing the data. It's what data are we passing? What do we have access to? And and when is it being, you know, when is it being passed? Is it being passed in a timely manner? Do we need this? If if someone calls in to check their balance, they it needs to be live. It doesn't need it doesn't need to be real time. We we can't do an overnight thing because they may have gone and spent a bunch of money that morning. So it's it's it's one of those that it's important to map the data properly first to understand what is prioritized what is real time versus patch, like I said, and so on and so forth. So I think that's where I see the biggest I wouldn't call it a challenge necessarily. I think that's the biggest lift in the in the whole kind of piece, but ultimately you're working towards an effective data transition. So I think that's that's something that I typically see and it's something that sometimes adds to the timelines is when we don't map out properly to to begin with, then you can experience delays in implementation because then we have to go back and figure out, okay, well wait, we don't have this information. How are we going to do this process? So something like that.
speaker-0: I I over my years I've seen I think the credit un ⁓ the core providers at at the very least are starting to understand that a little bit more. A lot of the core providers have and I hate to use the same terminology as what you're using. I almost feel like it's an insult, but they have their own baked in CRM ish tools. And to say they're ⁓ middling it at best is is being charitable. And I To credit union's credit, they've they've made do with that for decades. But to the earlier point that you have these things need to be aware of what's happening across the credit union. And a bolt-on, you know, feature inside of a monolithic core stack is just not going to cut it anymore because there's so many things going on outside of the core. ⁓ I think I think the vendors like LOS and and collections and phone systems and stuff. those vendors I think are probably a little bit easier to work with because they they already have to by design. They have to live in the world where they're already outside of the core. They're already outside of that data. So they've they've solved for a lot of that early on because they need to, otherwise they're not going to be able to deliver it. Exactly. So they've got to leg up and and I think some of the core vendors are starting to learn that lesson. I knowing that there are new entrants out there that are cloud first, API enabled. composable, all those really terms that that if I was looking for a core product today would be at the top of my list. They're learning that that is is becoming more and more important over the last five or ten years. But they're just they're slow to market with a lot of this stuff. And some of them still are just fighting tooth and nail. And and I know for a fact that a lot of them still pitch their horrendous CRM platform to credit unions when they are considering those cores. And, you know, I think that does them a disservice because it's putting them in a position of being able to offer what is probably a decent core. But when you start bolting on these legacy outdated, unintegrated, non-agentic, all those buzzwords, when you bolt that on top of the core, it just weighs it down and you end up with this boat anger. So I I I would agree. I think they're we're we're kind of in a renaissance here a little bit. And and I think AI certainly is going to help move this forward. If if you're not in some way, shape, or form mentioning AI on your investor calls or investor days, you're your your stocks gonna you're gonna take a hit if it hasn't already. So they're they're gonna need to figure out a way to exist in the world where there are competitors now that are are that is for them. You know, the way they grew up and the way that they're built. In the same way that SoFi is super hyper optimized for efficiency. They were just built that way. We were built on spreadsheets and general ledgers. So it's hard to to compete in that world when you're to go back to one of the things we said right from the beginning about Creatio being a BPM focused, BPM pedigree ⁓ company and maybe having that sixty percent split on the service side. It's not to say that you're Not driving a Porsche. You are. It's a great product and it's a strong product, but it's probably not the right product if your focus is on marketing automation and sales. ⁓ you're because then you're getting 20 a a good 20% and it's just not fit for purpose. So I I I I your perspective absolutely as you know the representative for Creatio, I like your I like your split. I think it's a good split. But if I'm all about just sending out marketing promos. I'm probably looking elsewhere and and it's probably better that I do because I why wouldn't you just use constant contact or something like that? Because for my organization, if that's all I'm I'm I'm willing to ⁓ move forward with, if I'm not interested in service, if I'm not interested in workflow, probably not going to make sense. So I'm gonna buy the pickup truck to tow my trailer. I'm not gonna buy my Porsche to tow to tow the trailer. That just that'd be silly. But they're both good vehicles.
speaker-1: It would be fun to see though. That's
speaker-0: Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. I'm sure somebody's got ⁓ taken or something like that that they're gonna, you know, the strap an EV V car to the back of a dump trailer or something like that. I'm you know, I I would love to see that on Instagram. So I so you l let's let's talk a little bit more about your experience coming into credit unions and I think we we covered the the credit union market pretty well and some of the challenges. I wanna talk a little bit about sort of the sales cycle. I don't wanna get too deep into the weeds on you know, the back and forth. But I think one area that I think is worth talking about is are credit unions prepared? We we talked early on about making sure that you're thinking about sales and you're thinking about service and you're thinking about ⁓ marketing automation. And we covered data. We know data is important and it's underpinning a lot of this stuff. Do you find that you have to sort of encourage your your prospective clients to do that kind of deep dive into what their current state is so that they can, I don't know, start the journey and have a good footing on the path to success along the way. Or do you feel like ⁓ credit unions that are coming to you specifically are already ready and it's it's just a matter of put getting the shovel in the ground and getting started. Where do you sort of see that today?
speaker-1: I think there's both. ⁓ I think that some a lot of times when we start to engage with credit unions, there's there's an interest or there's a curiosity about, hey, we heard this or hey, we we need to do this. We we kind of know. What I don't think is a common knowledge is the breadth of what is possible. So when we start to look at ⁓ like you said earlier, I think a lot of times somebody will come in and say, We need a marketing solution. But we don't they don't they don't know that that they also have the ability to use something like Creatio for sales and for, you know, consultations and for for service as well. So that's you know, doing that current state activity workshop, that's actually something that I do ⁓ very often with credit unions, is basically look at hey, what are you doing today? What where are the pain points today? And kind of digging into that because a lot of times you'll find that in in some organizations, maybe the marketing team doesn't underst doesn't know that the that the MSRs have a or don't have this ability into this and it's a simple fix sometimes. Sometimes it's not, or sometimes it's a wish list item, or that the that the call center doesn't have this information. Or if we did one thing better, then this would make someone's lives easier. So I think going through that current state is is extremely important because it opens up areas that we really need to focus. So that's typically where I start with it with with some of the workshops that I do is let's walk through what you're doing. Then we look at, okay, here's how, you know, creatio fits into these things. So let's talk through, you know, the full process and make it and and turn this into a future state. Let's look at where you want to improve. Where are those pain points that we can address and make this better? And maybe there's not any pain points in something like marketing, but there are in the in a branch ⁓ in the branch operation some something something like that that you wouldn't really know unless you start to dig into the actual day to day and the actual processes that are happening instead of just looking at it as hey we're just going to get another technology that does th these five bullet points. So I think putting it into perspective of this is going to be a part of our day to day lives in our jobs is is extremely important. And to that point, We now AI obviously is is everywhere and it's it's always good to look at a future process as if you are redoing it. That doesn't mean that you're doing everything wrong and that it doesn't mean that you're going to transform everything, but we have to look at it as a new process. Otherwise we're just going to be putting AI on top of a process that's already potentially broken or that's that's not as you know, it's not best practice, whatever it might be. We don't want to just drop AI on top of it. You want to build a process that includes AI where you need it or includes these different capabilities of, you know, a CRM as you go. So it's not that we are reinventing the wheel necessarily. It's that we are, you know, redesigning it, let's say. Yep.
speaker-0: I was on a podcast recently and I don't know if you're familiar with I Love Lucy, the old sitcom, but there is a there's an episode where Lucy and Ethel are working in a chocolate factory and they've there's an assembly line that comes by and there's chocolates and they have to take pick take it to chocolate and wrap it and put it back on the assembly line and it goes into another room. So the point that I made is could we replace Lucy with a robot? Yes, we absolutely could. So we have a robot with, you know, let's say just say three fingers and it picks up the chocolate and it's got another hand that wraps it and puts it down. So will that be faster? Yeah. So the robot will just do this faster than Lucy can. Lucy's stuffing the chocolates in her shirt and her hat and she's they're eating them. So the robot can do that, but you're still basing it on the human process that was designed in this case in the nineteen fifties. So Does that make sense? Is that the right way to apply that technology? It's not. If you look at Hershey's or you look at a a major chocolate manufacturer, they have these massive machines that that drop thousands of pieces of chocolate right into a wrapper and they wrap the heat transfer and j done. And you know, so there's ten thousand pieces of chocolate that's done in in a matter of seconds. If you use the robot, you got the the robot's gonna get arthritis in its elbow and you gotta replace the fingers and they wear out and all that kind of stuff. So That whenever somebody talks about AI and applying technology, I always say go back to the process. And for Creatio, this is this is where you guys were raised in business process automation. Don't automate, don't improve a process that shouldn't exist. Instead of doing the individual finger thing, let's just let's make 10,000 pieces of candy at once and you know ship them right out the door. So I 100% agree with you. I think it is so important to really look at the processes before you apply technology, automation, RPA, AI, or even CRM. I think those two things really kind of go together. And I always see the the process improvement piece as foundational to any effort that certainly touches members, touches data, touches any of that stuff. And ⁓ if you don't, you're gonna end up with a robotic Lucy that's just, you know, that's breaking all the time because you're wearing a stupid thing out. So
speaker-1: I mean, and that to that point it's ⁓ you I mean, the robot would probably eat less of the the chocolates, which is but I so that's a maybe that's a good thing. So you're you're cutting down on, you know, unnecessary activities. That's yeah, yeah, less waste than I do. I want to frame it that way, but yes, absolutely. But at the same time, I mean, th there are certain things that AI is not built to do. W that's the way that we typically look at it, is that humans are, you know, built you know, built to
speaker-0: That's waste.
speaker-1: For lack of better word to say, to do certain things. They're better at certain things. So if you're doing something like a taste test with chocolates, robots not going to be able to do that. It's not gonna be it's not gonna be able to taste the that one of these is off, whatever it might be. But a human can. So when it comes to having conversations with members or tough conversations sometimes, or helping them to kind of reading into the nuance of a situation, that's something the humans should absolutely be a part of. And I know that we automation is through the roof now, whether that's, you know, RPA or whether that's AI, and when we have what we call autonomous agents. And that that's to me a little bit misleading sometimes because a the vast majority of times there's still a human in the loop and you still want them to be in the loop because hey, we need that actual I always find myself saying a second set of eyes, but it's really a first set of human eyes. Yeah. On some of these, on some of these processes just to make sure, hey, this is doing it the right way. Mm-hmm. It is a sen some of these things are sensitive conversations, but there are other processes that are lower stakes, let's say, that that are really the bread and butter of something like an AI agent or ⁓ you know, an automated process. So I think there's finding when you go to redesign some of those processes, it's pretty obvious which ones you are a little bit less or you're a little bit more hesitant to automate the full thing. That's where you want a human in the loop. And that's totally fine if you're still improving that process using the capabilities and new technology that you have, but you're also keeping that personalization. You're keeping that human there in case so that we can treat the process with the respect of design.
speaker-0: Absolutely. I I love that you said human in the loop there. The ⁓ one of the one of the things that I hear a lot whenever the subject of CRM is brought up, I a a lot of people instantly think about the the big fish in the pond, the big whale and the amount of human resources required to support a massive, massive you almost need a force of people to support some of those products. So that that is always a concern. And a lot of times I I've run into executives that do that calculus in their head instantly. They think, all right, I need a team of five people to support this massive deployment of this super complex CRM product that's gonna require us partnering with a third party that's got a a fleet of developers that are specialized in and how to live in this this world and and everything is going to be about this particular product or service. So So the cost benefit analysis is instantly done and it's we ⁓ nobody likes CRM, nobody wants to do it. So ⁓ I know Creatio, one of the one of the things that that you are are are pushing or or one of the things that's that's kind of foundational to your product is the low code, no code approach. And and I know there are a lot of vendors out there doing similar things and ⁓ and I'm curious how how How should credit unions approach the idea of getting into low code, no code with something that is handling a lot of member data, that is going to be in front of all the colleagues? We call our employees colleagues, that's going to be in front of the colleagues, and then potentially in some cases, depending on how you deploy this, may even be in front of members. So how do you how do you weigh the risks associated with that against the idea that it may be? one of the reasons why you're there in the first place, because the idea is now you don't need to have a fleet of developers ready to customize and deploy these agents or tools or workflows inside of your product. So how do you how do you weigh that and how do you have that communication with credit unions early on?
speaker-1: I think that's one of the main it's one of the biggest values that we can provide is enabling business users and subject matter experts to to essentially build the system in a way that works for them. It's because of course we have out of the box credit union workflows and that's totally fine. But that may not fit every credit union. It may not fit with the way that that you're doing business. So in traditional back in whatever a few years ago that with when you didn't have no code options, you're going and getting in, putting it on a roadmap with an IT team or playing the telephone game, which is even worse. To me, that's a bigger problem is that you're not just waiting on a s a fix or a you know enhancement or a change to the to the systems that you have to use every day. You're not just waiting on it is that they don't understand what you're asking for. So then you end up with a a a different incorrect process or function of of the system and it just kind of snowballs because then and then you lose adoption. You lose users because they're like, hey, this isn't working for me. This is not what I want. So it's adding no value. So I think one of the main benefits of no code is that you ⁓ you obviously still want a center of excellence, but it allows the business users, the people that are actually using this to go in and build what they would like to build or Change what they would like to change to fit the actual day-to-day lives that they're living. And I think they ⁓ go back to kind of a center of excellence there. It's not that you don't want IT involved with that, because of course, when you're establishing integrations or something like that, then maybe this is something that that they do need to be involved in. Or you could have someone that is designated administrator that is going in and making changes for people. But when you have at least input from the from the people from the front lines, from the people that are in it every single day. That's what's really valuable when it comes to building out something that's going to work. ⁓ hey, I need this field. I want to know this about these people. So you go in and you drag and drop that field onto the screen. That's huge compared to going in and having to know how to code to make that change. So obviously you limit that ability to to certain people. But that doesn't mean that you don't create that committee or whatever you want to call it, center of excellence, that that does give input and feedback and that constant improvement of of usability to an extent. Because that's ultimately how you drive adoption is to provide something to people that is valuable to them, not just by, hey, you've got this tool, use it if you want to. You want people to say, Hey, I love this. Can we do this? And that's where ⁓ again, I mean, going like one step further, you when when you enable them to provide ideas and insights and and they actually show up in a system, you know, that's where they start to get other ideas. Hey, can we do this? Can we do that? And then you can really, you know, expand your your usage of it to fit all sorts of different things because it goes back to the business process management piece is that you can build HR operations in it. You can build training modules in it. So it's it's those types of things that really kind of enable the broader credit union and all sorts of different teams to put their activities in there as well. So this kind of enables creativity if you wanted to simplify that.
speaker-0: So you I I like that you called out you're not gonna have tellers creating agents and workflows and things like that. I I I would agree with that. I think there's probably a a business analyst role that are probably ideal because they they have the business knowledge about w what the internal process is, where data needs to flow, which people need to to do what. They may not have They may not know how to write SQL. They may not understand JSON or Java or anything like that, but they can certainly drag and drop information and put together a a fairly basic workflow that that not only mirrors the existing business process, but is also they're smart enough to understand the flow of data and the flow of knowledge and the flow of work. So yeah, I I think I like the way you framed it too. ⁓ what did you call it? ⁓ operational, not operational excellence. ⁓ yeah.
speaker-1: Center of excellence.
speaker-0: I love I I love that. I think that's a great way of really kind of framing the group of people that are empowered to look within your organization to find ways to apply things like low code, node code tools to the work they already do.
speaker-1: Yeah. And I mean, to your point there, that the center of excellence is typically made up of, let's say, and IT specialists, and then you have a business analyst. So you have both sides of this because maybe the business analyst knows that we need to build a let's just call it a branch process that they've heard from the the subject matter experts at the branch. So they can build that, but maybe we're missing a piece of information from core. So back to our earlier conversation. Then They may not know how to adjust an integration of connection to to add that piece of information, but the IT person does. So you're basically minimizing the the the responsibilities of IT to very focused things that you need to do. And they are, you know, much rarer than having to just adjust a process or something like that. So being able to offload some of those IT resources, I'm not gonna get into that, but it's I mean, it indirectly opens them up to, you know, addressing some other tech that they may have. So that that may have nothing to do with a CRM or whatever it is. So I think there's lots of benefits to being able to empower the business users to have input and actually go in and change some of these things for for what they need. ⁓
speaker-0: Absolutely. What so thinking about your engagements with credit unions over the, you know, the last few years, and and you certainly don't need to name individual credit unions, but if there's a credit union that you would sort of hold up as a as a model client, a credit union that came to you guys ready to go right out of the box, and our super users are using, yeah, they're your your your perfect reference client. What's one thing that they're doing that you wish other clients can or would do before they pick up the phone to have that conversation with you in preparation for the next steps.
speaker-1: think that it is I I'll go back to somewhat of an earlier answer as well. Understanding where they want to focus. Under understanding what the scope is. That doesn't mean that that can't change or let's say expand because hey, maybe they learned something that that we could do that they didn't know previously. That's totally fine. But I think having an idea of what they're looking for I think is is very important. So talking to the different business lines. Sometimes to give an example, sometimes we have talked to credit unions that do commercial lending, consumer lending, and in mortgage lending. And then only one business line is aware that we're that of that because they heard they were a little bit louder and they say, Hey, we need something like creatio here. And then the commercial side says, Hey, well, we do too, right? So I think just maybe establishing that I don't want to call it a committee because it's a bit less formal than that, but establishing those those leaders of the different business lines to understand what are we what do you guys need? Because when we're looking at an enterprise technology and solution, it is going to touch all these different areas, marketing, commercial lending, you know, sales. I all those different things are are involved, call centers. So I think that really figuring out where we can help ⁓ i is big. And of course we would help to do that. That's what we want. That's what we're there for, is to assist with with identifying those things. But I think understanding where the needs are helps to to have a little bit more valuable discussion from the beginning as opposed to, hey, tell us what, you know, about what creation does or something like that. Mm-hmm.
speaker-0: How how effective have you been? ⁓ let me rephrase that. Are you having, are you finding it's difficult to get out in front of credit unions? I I became aware of Creatio because I was at a very small conference in in Michigan Michigan? No, Ohio, in in February. And I I met ⁓ some of the folks from Creatio there. And ⁓ that that is really how I came across Creatio. Are you having a hard time getting in front of credit unions? Or are you where where do you see the challenges in engaging with more credit union clients in the future?
speaker-1: I don't find that it's difficult to get in front of them because I think that it is starting to become more common and credit unions are now recognizing the need for something like this. Because as you said, member relationships are the the priority for for credit unions. And I think that unfortunately, if banks have more resources than they can in the past, they've had more to invest into something like a a CRM. So But when realistically that's what credit unions were are all about in general. So I think that w they're starting to kind of recognize that hey, this is more than just, like you said, a sales pipeline and marketing tool. This is actually benefiting the members and the the service aspect of that too. So I think that there's much more interest now. But I think that, you know, we we obviously are in a market with some very, very, very large players ⁓ which have ⁓ the name recognition that ⁓ we don't necessarily have yet. So a lot of what what I do is really try to get the word out. I mean, whether that is conferences, whether that is talking to to people, things like this too. So I think it's it's one thing that we are certainly working on, but we did grow significantly last year in the financial services space. ⁓ just sixty percent year over years. And you have your own conference. Yeah, and then credit and exactly it in our own conference, which was was very, very large this year too. We just got done with it actually a couple weeks ago. And yeah, so I mean I think just getting out and and really talking to people and understanding that the creation many, many, many times, ⁓ I would say say ninety percent of the time fits better than something that some of the larger players offer because we are focused on the five hundred million to the the twenty billion. credit unions as opposed to these much larger solutions that are, you know, much more expensive and so on and so forth. So I think that's one of the the main the the value drivers there that the interest that we get is because we are obviously more affordable and can do everything that that those people are doing too. So yeah. So it's been interesting and it's been great. So we're still still working on it.
speaker-0: Well, this was great, Chris. ⁓ th like I said, this was the second one I've done so far with this ⁓ CRM topic and we've got one more to do and I'm really looking forward to the the round table with with all of you guys on the call 'cause ⁓ I I it I did not design it this way, but it sort of worked out so that, you know, the first one was very sales and marketing automation focused. The second one is a bit more service focused. And the third one I is a little bit of a wild card for me. So we're I'm really looking forward to that that battle royale that we're gonna set up in a couple of weeks, whatever that looks like. I I toyed around with the idea of making this sort of a relaxed everybody is sipping on a brandy or whiskey or something like that. But then I then I thought about it. I said, after 30 minutes or so, that might not go well. We've got a bunch of competitors sitting around the table having some drinks and conversations. That that may we may have to use the bloop button a couple of times on that one.
speaker-1: You can't say it wouldn't be interesting though.
speaker-0: Absolutely. Maybe we'll toy around with that. Maybe we'll workshop that one a little bit and we'll record it and see what happens. If it's safe, we'll release it. If not, we'll do it again and we'll we'll make it a ⁓ a a PG thirteen or a PG ⁓ rating instead. So but this was awesome. This was great. This is ⁓ I I love the conversation, I love the information. I I really think Creatio's got a an interesting solution. I love the pedigree in in the the the BPM world. I'm a process nerd. I love process. I'm six Sigma certified and I so I love being efficient. ⁓ so again, this was great. We're gonna, you know, we'll get together in again in a couple of weeks with some of our other friends. ⁓ but ⁓ I really appreciate your time today.
speaker-1: No, thanks for having me. It's been great. And it's enjoy television too. Looking forward to
speaker-0: Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.
