At a glance:

A top-rated commercial bank was saddled with a chaotic, outdated network infrastructure. We helped them transform it into a smoothly-running productivity tool.

The Problem:

As one of the Pacific Northwest’s leading commercial lenders, our client was well-versed in bringing order to its clients’ finances. Now they needed someone to do the same for their IT systems.

Over time, the bank’s network had sprawled into a labyrinth. Contracts with at least four different telecom providers were spread over six locations. Hardware of varying makes, much of which was nearing the end of its useful life, was serviced by a jumble of vendors—and some of it had known security holes.

When performance issues came up, this convoluted arrangement made it all but impossible to run them down—and in any case, the IT staff was so busy just keeping the network up and running there was scarcely time for fine-tuning.

On top of all this, the bank was moving one of their largest facilities to a new location—and the new office needed to be online on day one. The bank realized they’d need help to turn this many-headed monster into a well-oiled machine. That’s when they called us.

Solutions: Analysis, Recommendations and Strategy

The first step was to create a methodical inventory of the existing system. This included not just the hardware and network configuration, but also the terms of all those carrier contracts and services—and what they currently cost.

Next, we focused on the network that the bank actually needed now, working with their IT team to define the requirements for performance and capacity. We also helped create a plan for seamlessly migrating services from the old location to the new one.

Using this information, we developed a plan to overhaul the existing network, making recommendations about which services to keep, which to cancel and which to replace when the current contract expired.

Solutions: Action and Implementation

Implementing this plan would be a challenging, time-consuming task. The bank elected to keep us on board to make sure it was done right.

We started with overhauling the connectivity, turning the tangled and inconsistent legacy network into a reliable tool to fit the bank’s requirements.

We also wrangled the maze of carriers, renewing, changing or canceling their services as necessary, and managed the migration of services to the new location according to the plan.

Finally, we took over the ongoing responsibility of dealing with the remaining telecom providers, giving the bank a single point of contact for all their telecom needs.

The Results:

A network that was once a source of stress and delays is now a tool for productivity. Performance is up, costs are down, and the bank knows exactly who to call if they need to change anything. And the migration was not only successful, it was finished ahead of schedule, allowing employees to hit the ground running.