Forecast 2010: CUNA Mutual CIO Rick Roy Discusses IT Strategy

As uncertain economic conditions prevail, CUNA Mutual's IT organization focuses on agility, execution and value creation.

The economy in 2009 was challenging for many organizations. For CUNA Mutual Group ($13.2 billion in assets under management), achieving our business objectives translated into helping customers weather the storm. As we enter 2010, uncertainty remains, and business circumstances can change at any moment. Therefore, we are renewing our IT strategy to drive agility, execution and value creation with our projects and deliverables.

To improve our agility and respond quickly to changing business needs, one area we are accelerating is our adoption of virtualization in our data centers, desktops and call centers. This focus will improve our costs by lowering power and cooling, increasing our management and performance benefits, and supporting green IT efforts. Further, virtualization enables the organization to turn the dial up or down as business demands change, improving our responsiveness to business stakeholders.

Second, we are putting the "I" back into "IT." As business demands change, business intelligence has emerged as an essential component to any business strategy. We view a comprehensive business intelligence vision and strategy as an important part of our growth and diversification objectives.

Finally, while execution may not be an exciting new trend, it is the backbone of every IT organization. For 2010 we are focusing on key delivery execution areas, including release management, technology retirement processes, and requirements and testing design approaches.

For us 2010 is about harnessing an opportunity for our IT organization to be a true business partner. Our plan will renew basic strategy fundamentals to drive goal alignment with business strategy and provide a clear IT road map for the future.