Case Study: Strategic Infrastructure & Systems Integration for Sawyer Savings Bank
Sawyer Savings is a well-respected community bank located in Saugerties, New York. With three branch locations, Sawyer Savings manages personal and business banking, residential and commercial lending and insurance investments. Their total asset size of $188 million places them comfortably in the small to medium size regional bank category.
Since 1871, Sawyer Savings Bank has taken an active role in the community, working with depositors and the community in building homes, creating jobs, aiding capital expansion and helping the area and its people to grow and prosper. Their motto is “we understand true success comes from long term relationships with the local people and businesses we serve.” cb20 and Sawyer Savings Bank have a long term relationship that has been successful for over a decade. During that time period, cb20 helped Sawyer achieve their business objectives by solving complex problems through the use of technology. In addition to traditional network design and support services, cb20 has worked with Sawyer to design and implement disaster recovery and business continuity solutions to ensure they meet their clients’ needs every day.
“cb20 has been integral in helping us incorporate new technology. They are our trusted advisor—bringing the field experience and knowledge that provide tremendous value. You can’t put a price on that.”
— James Whitaker, Sawyer Savings Bank
The IT Challenges: Security, Compliance, and Resource Constraints
As a trusted regional bank with three branch offices, including residential and commercial lending, Sawyer Savings saw the need to manage their sensitive data securely and efficiently between locations. With the financial services industry so heavily regulated, auditing, compliance and security are an important part of their business. Protecting customer assets, information and privacy is something the bank takes very seriously. With limited IT resources, Sawyer needed a partner to rely on for strategic planning and implementation, systems integration and support to help manage all of their servers, storage, security and networks.
“As a small to medium business, we needed everything from basic Exchange management to advanced network engineers,” recalls James Whitaker, Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Sawyer Savings. “We couldn’t afford to keep that level of technologist in-house, nor did we want to. We wanted to work with someone who could provide those advanced services like network virtualization, implementation and monitoring, and who could also provide every day help desk support to our growing business. cb20 has done all of that for us over the years—saving us a lot of time and money.”
Delivering a Network Health Check-Up
Through their Proactive Management Services, cb20 offers a customized solution designed to help financial institutions like Sawyer Savings maintain information technology systems with regards to industry best practices. The fully automated monitoring and alerting of health, availability and performance of infrastructure and services is designed to streamline operations. By relying on cb20 for the ongoing support and maintenance of their information technology assets, the bank’s staff is freed to focus on strategic business initiatives that grow revenue and improve customer satisfaction.
cb20’s remote Network Monitoring and Audit System manages all of the bank’s networks and alerts Sawyer if there are any security or performance issues that need to be addressed. On a quarterly basis, a remediation list of issues and solutions is developed and shared with the Sawyer team. A senior engineer is onsite to meet with the bank and provide a proactive report on network activity, servers and hardware to review what is running smoothly and where they may need help.
By establishing an initial baseline “health” score for the bank’s networks, cb20 can then monitor all day-to-day network activity and compile the results in their quarterly report—including a C-level dashboard tool that allows executives to better understand their network needs, justify expenditures within IT and plan for budgets in the future. For example, if the bank’s storage capacity needs to be upgraded, the company has a documented performance history to refer to, analyze trends, and prepare for additional expenditures with no surprises.
“Because I moved into a more administrative role at the bank, I had a greater need for tools and reports that give me a sense of control without being in the day to day operations. The cb20 reports and dashboard give me an overview of what is going on and allows me to drill into the details if necessary.”
— James Whitaker, Sawyer Savings Bank
“This is a great C-level tool,” says Dave Wilbur, Client Business Manager at cb20. “With a dashboard, managers can review network performance and issues while comparing to a benchmark number. This allows IT departments to justify IT expenditures and help managers plan for IT budgets in the future. We take all of the guesswork out of updating IT.”
cb20’s senior level engineers are on-site quarterly at Sawyer to help make recommendations based on past performance and emerging technologies. With improved information for better IT resource planning, the Sawyer management team has increased the predictability of their network management costs—saving them money in the long term.
Ensuring Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Planning
cb20 monitors and manages cloud services and websites as well as hosted infrastructure to quickly identify and correct any performance issues to ensure Sawyer can deliver the excellent customer service for which it is known. cb20 uses fast connections to any network device and extensive remote management tools to fix problems without opening ports or firewalls. By ensuring the bank has consistent back-ups they are covered in case of disaster and can recover files quickly. With reduced business interruptions and increased network uptime, employees can be more productive and responsive to their customers—whether at a branch, or via their online banking system.
Sawyer also benefits from the cb20 Help Desk should any issues arise. “The benefit of working with a company like cb20 is their high-level of support and expertise,” says Whitaker. “They bring in top-level specialists when needed who are fantastic at solving issues. When we have an issue, they can tell us why a solution we have may or may not work for us—they have usually done it before and have the experience to know when a solution will work long term, or more importantly when it won’t.”
“The support we receive from cb20 is tremendous. From impressive helpdesk troubleshooting support to advanced level engineering, they are always responsive, organized and ready to solve any issue we may have.”
— James Whitaker, Sawyer Savings Bank
Moving Towards the Future with Desktop Virtualization
Continuing their 10-year relationship, Sawyer Savings and cb20 implemented a Desktop Virtualization Solution. This solution allows the same look and feel for users from each branch location—giving them a consistent profile and access to their work space—wherever they are. Users can access their virtual desktop and subscribe to corporate applications on-demand from any PC, Mac, thin client, tablet or smartphone. This enables device flexibility, business continuity, and user mobility. All applications are seamlessly integrated into a single interface, so users only need to log on once to have secure access to all their applications.
cb20 can deliver every type of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)—from simple and standardized, to high-performance and personalized—using a single solution specifically tailored to meet the performance, security, and flexibility requirements of each user. This helps keep the corporate environment secure while allowing employees to access their personalized profile desktop from any branch location. Many employees work at different branches; the VDI allows improved compliance with centralized control, delivers a secure and consistent interface for increased productivity, reduces the support burden and centralizes data management.
Sawyer can now give their users encrypted access to desktops, applications, and valuable intellectual property from anywhere while eliminating the risk of data theft or loss, and increasing employee productivity while improving their employees’ day-to-day work experience.
The end result? Sawyer Savings has a greater degree of confidence in the lifecycle of their network and can proactively plan for and predict areas of concern, expense and growth. “Whether our clients need to add memory to their servers, upgrade their network, disaster recovery or business continuity planning or implement a new technology solution—we are there for them every step of the way,” says Wilbur.
“cb20 is integral in helping us implement new technology,” concludes Whitaker. “They are our trusted advisor—bringing the field experience and knowledge that provide tremendous value. You can’t put a price on that.”
About cb20
cb20 is a technology solutions provider of choice for organizations that value IT and Managed Services expertise and category-leading customer service. We partner with the world’s leading hardware and software companies to deliver end-to-end consulting, implementation and managed services across the U.S. With world-class engineering talent and 30+ years of experience, cb20 delivers confidence, security, a true sense of control and the highest-quality, end-to-end customer experience in the business.