Keeping all the plates spinning is a challenge faced by every organisation, and in this constantly evolving landscape, managing their technology stack is becoming the fastest spinning plate of them all.
Within the financial services sector, guidelines from the central bank and the rapid pace of cybercrime leaves no room for error. For credit unions, ensuring that their member data is secure and their operations are compliant is key to their operational success.
St. Francis Credit Union set about finding a Digital Services provider that could support them on this mission and, according to CEO Louis Fay, Viatel Technology Group was the perfect fit.
“We were looking for an IT Partner. Viatel were part of the discussion and given that they are an indigenous Irish company, we were very pleased to partner with them and consider them to be one of our main partners in terms of our business. They understand our business and they understand our risk profiles”, Louis said.
Where it all began
“We originally started off with Viatel providing our IT Support on a daily basis here in the credit union”, shares John Egan, IT Officer, St. Francis.
“It was very quickly that we realised how good their operation was and how professional they were with their structures and processes. Very soon after that, we moved our connectivity and SD-Wan over to them so that we would have a holistic approach to how we operate within the credit union.”
For John and his team, having access to the support and expertise that Viatel provides played a key role in how the relationship progressed over time.
“Having the wide and expanding team that they have, they had the expertise and the knowledge that allowed us to rely on them as one of our core providers to make sure that we were in the right spot within compliance, security and operationally for what we do within the credit union.”
The next steps- future proofing
Having established a long-standing and trusted relationship with the team at Viatel Technology Group, Louis, John and the team at St. Francis felt the time had come to make the move to the cloud. With customer experience front and centre for their team, John reveals that to be able to continue to deliver on their mission to provide the best possible service to their customers, a move to the cloud was the natural next step.
“The Azure migration was a big step for us as a credit union and probably for the credit union sector in general because there probably hasn’t been any one of our size, and very few credit unions, that have done that type of work before,” John said.
Along with seamless service delivery, security was also a driver in the change.
“Security was always a key point for us to look at within the credit union. For us, the move to Azure gave us the opportunity to avail of a lot more security features that we could bring and implement into our systems, while holding our members’ information securely as we can was very important.” While a move like this can cause apprehension, all the team's fears were quelled once the migration was complete.
“Interestingly enough, the go-live date was probably the smoothest thing I have ever witnessed in IT,” Louis shared.
One Provider- One Port of Call
“Having Viatel as our core provider for a number of services worked very well. If there were any issues or troubleshooting that needed to be done, we had a direct line of contact with their team and immediate feedback from multiple engineers and different areas of their business. They could co-ordinate with each other holistically and get any issue resolved quickly,”
As St. Francis continuously endeavour to bring the best services to their members, having the team behind them to implement changes and support them as they continue to grow is invaluable.
If you would like to learn more about what Viatel Technology Group can do to support your business, get in touch today, by emailing hello@viatel.com.