Citizens Bank
Learn how Citizens Bank overhauled their phone system and network with innovative technology for increased efficiency and cost savings with our team of experts.
Summary
Founded in 1931, Citizens Bank offers competitive banking services to the local central Indiana community. While their team is focused on putting people first, they needed a better way for their internal team to communicate for improved customer service.
Here’s how we partnered with Citizens Bank to solve that challenge through an IT consolidation strategy.
Customer Name
Citizens Bank
Products and Services
Synkato UCaaS
Managed IT Services
Business Internet
Microsoft 365
Industry
Banking
Organization Size
Large (101 – 500 employees)
The Challenge
As Citizens Bank continues to grow across central Indiana, they were utilizing several small phone systems through a variety of carriers. This forced branches to outward dial one another, and in some cases, even incur long-distance charges for calls between locations. As with the phone carriers, branches also procured Internet connectivity from a variety of vendors, which increased the complexity of managing their networks, as well as their cost.
With multiple vendors and systems aging rapidly, Citizens Bank determined it was time to consolidate their services with one vendor. As part of the process, they decided to upgrade their 15-year-old phone system in its main branch location, as well as overhaul the entire network. Because Citizens Bank used a third-party vendor for security, one of its greatest concerns was managing security during the migration to a new data network.
The Solution
AxiaTP’s team met with Citizen Bank’s Senior VP of Technology, Cory Palmer, to learn more about their current phone and network environment, as well as understand their specific needs and special requirements related to the regulation of financial institutions.
Based on those conversations, AxiaTP implemented a consolidation strategy that included:
-
- A redesign of the core network
- Replacement of the existing multiple phone systems with our in-house unified communications platform, Synkato
- Replacement of all outdated phone hardware with HD-voice phone units
- An upgrade of the existing data connectivity to MPLS Ethernet circuits
- Implementation of managed network services, including firewalls and routers
“At the beginning of our search, it was the people at AxiaTP who won us over. Then when we saw all of the features of [Synkato] versus the competition, there really was no comparison.”
– Cory Palmer, Senior VP of Technology
The Results
Since implementing the consolidation strategy and Synkato system, Citizens Bank has seen a huge gain in efficiencies across branches, along with a monthly cost savings of 44%. The bank’s Network Administrator also worked with the AxiaTP team and security vendor to address and resolve third-party network security concerns to make the integration seamless.
Since the consolidation, Citizens Bank has been able to use their monthly cost savings to improve other areas of their IT infrastructure, including the addition of Microsoft 365 and circuit upgrades.
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic posed a challenge to the banking industry, which operates primarily with on-site staff. Because Synkato is hosted with the cloud, Citizens Bank was able to easily pivot 40% of their workforce to working remote with no disruption to daily operations.
By the Numbers:
- 44% monthly cost savings after consolidation of phone and network services
- 10 branches connected to one phone system for faster communication
- 40% of workforce transitioned to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic
