Financial institutions have an obligation to provide timely, accurate, reliable service to their customers. To do so in today's world requires a computer system with the latest state-of-the-art advancements and a relationship with the vendors that can provide them. So, when Las Vegas-based Silver State Schools Credit Union felt the time had come to upgrade its system, it turned to Orange County, Calif.-based Strategic Technology Solutions (STS), a leading provider of turnkey IT systems to credit unions across the country, to give its backup and recovery functions a much-needed boost.
With 58,000-plus members and 15 locations throughout Southern Nevada, Silver State knew it had to live up to the reputation it had developed from the time it opened its doors in 1951. Indeed, its mission statement is "Excellent Member Service." The bank's enterprise network's 235 workstations handle such important data as member statements, delinquency reports, deposits, transfers, withdrawals, loan applications and a host of back-office accounting records each day, all of which must be available immediately, on demand.
"Credit unions provide service, and if they can retrieve member information rapidly, quickly process new transactions and respond to member requests promptly, there is a tremendous cost savings that can be passed on to members as increased dividends, reduced loan rates and better service," according to Rich Sato, president of STS.
Slow Process
The credit union had been backing up transactions to standard IBM tape, then driving them across town for safekeeping. This inefficient method caused a full restore to take many hours to complete, an unacceptably long time for a financial institution to be down.
"The key to our operational efficiency is immediate and continual access to data, and we worried about business continuance should a major data outage strike," says Dan Kinne, vice president of IT at Silver State.
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