Meet the Tech Exec: Gary M. Devan, CIO, Mission Federal Credit Union

What would you say your top 5 focuses are this year?

First, to improve the experience of our customers, whom we call members, which is one of the hot topics of financial institutions right now and which has always been very important to us. We’re focusing on making sure it is an effective, efficient and pleasant experience for our members.

Second, we are focused on regulatory change and ensuring that we are compliant with all the regulations that come down along with that change as well.

Next, Security and information security is always a focus in continuing to address new threats and improving our security posture and protection.

Fourth is management information. Some people will call it big data, and, although we might not need a big data solution, we do need to understand how we can best utilize all the information we have to serve our members and attract new members.  Along with that, we work on exactly how we manage information and present information to operations and management.

The last is basically always an ongoing priority:  Internal efficiencies and the best practices that are aligned with them, or doing better than the best practices.  We are always enhancing our products and services.

What’s your take on public cloud?

It certainly is a hot topic of conversation right now that we continue to look at. We use cloud services for applications, with SaaS (Software as a Service) being what we use right now. We are watching other architectural clouds, but we are still not yet convinced that security is better or service delivery is better through the public cloud.  There are two factors that we don’t believe have matured enough yet: insurance coverage and defined legal responsibilities.  We haven’t seen anything go to court yet on this, so if information is lost, what is our liability versus the cloud provider?  It hasn’t been fully vetted out in my opinion; not in the cloud.

Is IT seen as business partners helping to drive revenue?

It’s evident with the IT lead as the C-Level position, that IT is critical for success; for meeting business objectives, serving our members and meeting their expectations, lowering expenses, and increasing revenue by growing our membership.  We have about 35 employees in our IT Department out of a total of over 500 employees at Mission Fed, and IT is frequently part of cross-functional teams working on key projects for the credit union.

How is IT driving innovation within the company?

We are continuing to ensure that our technology architecture, network, and security are of high quality. We have service level delivery requirements that we keep things up and running to a very high standard. From a pure IT architecture position, we are the lead in change in that area.  From an applications point of view we do have a committee that IT chairs, with participants from several other senior managers that determine priorities for programming projects.  From an executive level, we validate project priorities and we bring topics and issues forth to that level.  We ensure that if there is something we are not doing to achieve our strategic objectives, they will bring it to our attention.  Now, we are just starting the discussions of crafting an innovation committee.  What we’re doing now is making sure our functionality in our electronic delivery channels meet our members needs and are consistent with what the competition is providing.

What does or could the internet of things for your business look like?

It means a connected world utilizing a device that is active and doing things on it’s own that you told it to do. It’s my watch.  It’s my Alexa.  It’s any technology and device that will simplify and interact with other devices.  It simplifies life.  Interfacing with Alexa; we are very close but not quite there yet. On your Apple Watch you can check your balance or transfer money, but the capabilities are pretty limited so far.  This is the way the Apple environment works; you will get certain connections just by checking time.

What kind of  hiring challenges have you experienced?

The pool and workforce is not sufficient to handle the demand.  We find it very challenging to hire skilled programmers who are experienced.  Over the last 6 months to a year, we have hired people with good education and talent, but less experience than we originally wanted.  So we provide them with a lot of coaching and training.  We do outsource certain projects and bring in software providers to do contract work.

If you could give guidance to any VP, IT Director about how they position their careers what would you tell them? 

I would say always work on relationships.  IT has always been known as the type job where you just focus on the project, not the people.  But IT has changed a lot in the last 10 years.  Technology leadership needs to be in the mainstream of the organization, and the only way to do that successfully is to become a team player.  That means understanding needs and cooperatively building on those needs; act as the consultant and not as the ruler.