Libro Credit Union banks on IT modernization to enable innovation

Seasoned IT leaders join forces in a pivotal credit union merger

For 80 years, Libro Credit Union has been delivering financial services to residents, businesses, and communities across southwestern Ontario, Canada. Throughout its long history, Libro has been committed to helping its customers – who are also its owners – achieve prosperity.

Witness to more than 30 years of that history is Scott Ferguson, who joined Libro straight out of university with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture but found his niche in IT. As personal computers and later the Internet emerged to transform the banking industry, Ferguson led the development of online and mobile banking at Libro. Now Executive VP of Information Systems, his initial team of two now numbers more than 70 IT professionals. Downplaying his achievements, Ferguson remarked, “I was just this crop scientist trying to figure things out.”

In 2014, in a pivotal merger with another large credit union, Ferguson welcomed Cathy Menard to the Libro team as VP of Information Systems. Menard was also a long-time IT pioneer and leader at her credit union - United Communities - and had known Ferguson for many years: “I come from a time when IT departments were very small, and when you needed to figure out how to do something, there wasn’t always information easily on-hand to help you. Instead, you built networks of professionals who you could trust if you ran into a problem. That's how I knew Scott at Libro.”

Stepping up to the unique challenges of an IT merger

In the wake of the merger, Ferguson and Menard together faced the challenges of leading a much larger IT department. Both accustomed to smaller IT shops that required employees to wear many hats, they looked forward to the opportunity to build specialist capabilities but also saw the need to formalize processes and policies. In pursuit of expertise to help them scale up, they turned to another trusted network of IT professionals – hometown neighbor Info-Tech Research Group.

Menard had used Info-Tech in the past and valued the unbiased, high-quality IT research: “I was always dealing with resource constraints. If I can get a leg up on implementation because someone's already done the research, I’m all for it. What’s important to me is speed of delivery, efficiency, and understanding where things can go wrong and then learning from that experience.”

“I was always dealing with resource constraints. If I can get a leg up on implementation because someone's already done the research, I’m all for it. What's important to me is speed of delivery, efficiency, and understanding where things can go wrong and then learning from that experience."
– Cathy Menard, VP, Information Systems, Libro Credit Union

Elevating IT performance to earn the trust of the business

As the team considered how to leverage its expanded capacity and resources to support Libro’s need to modernize and innovate, Ferguson sought to identify the department’s strengths and weaknesses in the eyes of the business. Using Info-Tech’s "CIO Business Vision" solution to survey internal stakeholders, Ferguson was able to assess satisfaction levels with IT service delivery and build a plan for improvement. Since then, he has run the survey twice more to measure IT’s progress.

The strong results were enough to win Ferguson an Info-Tech CIO Award in 2019, and he was joined by Libro’s CEO for the award presentation in Las Vegas. Ferguson noted the value of his CEO’s engagement in the results: “If you can help the executive see that IT is a business enabler, it goes a long way to helping IT join the business conversation at your organization.”

Modernizing IT to support innovation

Against the backdrop of an increasingly competitive financial services industry and changing customer expectations, Ferguson and Menard have embarked on a number of modernization initiatives including data governance, disaster recovery, optimizing the service desk, Agile development, and robotic process automation (RPA). Leaning on Info-Tech for support, the team has saved time and money. “We gain days by using Info-Tech research for our projects. Without Info-Tech, I’d have to get employees to spend valuable time doing research. Info-Tech has been a trusted resource that I value – I look at them as an extension of my team,” said Menard.

Menard described how Info-Tech’s guided implementations, workshops, and advisory services have supported Libro’s efforts to standardize, automate, and innovate:

Data Governance – “We tackled data governance by recognizing and communicating that data is a company asset, not an IT asset, and we needed to get everyone to understand its importance. So Info-Tech did a workshop with all our senior leaders to start us down that path. We’re still on the journey, but we continue to lean on the roadmap that Info-Tech set us up with.”

Agile Practices – “We’ve been engaging with Info-Tech to ensure we’re resourced correctly to be successful in supporting our Agile teams. We did a planning session with all our IS leaders, and the Info-Tech Agile expert was amazing. He gave us a lot of guidance on areas that we need to think about. We’re really setting up this year to walk through that Agile journey.”

Robotic Process Automation – “It’s a true IS operations initiative aimed at efficiencies and automation in our back offices. We walked through a whole process with Info-Tech on best practices, advice on vendors, and even reviewing our RFI to help us make a vendor decision.”

Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning – “As we get larger, we’re more regulated. So we focused on improving our disaster recovery procedures and policies. We partnered with Info-Tech to help us document them. We leaned on Info-Tech’s expertise and guidance to walk us through that process.”

Service Desk – “We have multiple teams that manage our help desk. We worked with Info-Tech to map out a model where we have one help desk team that does triage and first-level support before escalating.”

Ferguson also stressed the importance of focusing on a service culture in IT. “It’s about providing a service and empathizing with people regarding the problems they are having. I actually have my people take sales training because I think it is important to understand how to find out what people's needs are. That really changed the direction of our department for the better.”

“It’s about providing a service and empathizing with people regarding the problems they are having. I actually have my people take sales training because I think it's important to understand how to find out what people's needs are. That really changed the direction of our department for the better.”
– Scott Ferguson, EVP, Information Systems, Libro Credit Union

Rising above the competition to drive customer value

Delivering superior banking experiences to its customers to help them reach their financial goals requires a Libro IT team that is ready with the technology, capabilities, and insight to act as a strategic partner in innovation. Ferguson, Menard, and the entire IT team are poised to do just that. Ferguson explained, “We are being challenged to innovate and create a difference in our service. IT’s role is critical, and we’re working with the rest of the business to bring that innovation forward.”