Business Case Study
Consumer Finance Industry
Challenges
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Lack of cohesive and convenient secure exchange methods led to delays in responses to customer inquiries, thus diminishing the customer experience
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Needed to integrate a flexible, secure messaging platform that would fulfill the compliant exchange and communication needs of over a dozen departments and their clients
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Avoid replacing existing information technology (IT) infrastructure
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Solution needed to be cost-effective
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Lack of internal resources
Solution
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DataMotion secure message center using REST APIs
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Outlook integration using data plug-in
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POP 3 SMTP integration
Background
This project was conducted on behalf of a public consumer finance company focused on vehicle finance and third-party servicing. This company manages accounts for more than three million customers, including car dealerships and vehicle buyers. As a subsidiary of a top global bank, this enterprise is in one of the most highly-regulated industries. Like most consumer finance companies, this organization offered account holders a self-service portal, which enabled customers’ online access to account information, but it did not have secure exchange capabilities.
From an IT perspective, this enterprise’s technology encompassed a large number of separate solutions from multiple vendors, which were applied throughout a dozen departments. This patchwork of systems proved inefficient; the disconnected systems could not communicate with each other without a centralized communications hub to uniformly secure and track all transactions to meet regulatory compliance.
Challenges
Traditionally, the company had relied on numerous, disparate systems to communicate with their clients, all requiring the proper regulations to control and prevent the leak of sensitive information. But due to a variety of factors, including a recent merger, the company had approximately a dozen departments of varying sizes that were not uniformly within compliance.
Keeping each system secure and compliant was an ongoing burden on their Information Security (InfoSec) team, as the systems would frequently block or otherwise prevent any communications that contained sensitive information, often negatively impacting the customer experience. The internal business environment was highly regulated, with customer service representatives required to obtain permission when responding to inquiries that contained sensitive information. This resulted in an inefficient, mired process for customer responses that could sometimes take weeks. The company therefore set out to find a cost-effective solution that could integrate with workflows familiar to CSRs and clients, while improving the security, compliance, efficiency, and overall experience in exchanges.
While the company understood the need for change and recognized the pain points, a major hurdle was personnel and management bandwidth. Employees had little time to evaluate and vet vendors, let alone determine and implement a solution internally. As one manager stated, “We just need to get things done, and have little time in which to do it.”
Requirements
It was imperative to keep the basic infrastructure largely the same so as to not disrupt the interface familiar to the customer, while implementing a centralized secure exchange solution. The main requirements for the solution were as follows:
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Integrate secure message center functions within the client services portal without sacrificing customer experience
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Integrate secure communications in an existing call center platform
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Continue using REST application program interfaces (APIs) for controlling the secure message center
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Provide access to client-CSR message history in each active mailbox
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Keep current active applications, since a full overhaul would be too costly
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Meet all compliance requirements in one of the most highly-regulated industries
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Deploy the service to public cloud infrastructure without compromising security and performance
Solution
To fulfill the needed requirements without an overhaul of the IT infrastructure or a change to existing workflows, the company decided on DataMotion’s secure message center, deployed in Azure and managed by the company. By opting for this solution, the company was able to integrate secure messaging into existing workflows, allowing consistent operation of secure messaging file transfer, while enabling security and compliance. Most importantly, the solution allowed customers to continue to operate within the normal transactional environment, with the only impact to their experience the positive outcome of faster responses.
Deploying the system on Azure enabled the company to utilize the latest available Microsoft technologies. Scalability is ensured in a cost-effective manner using features such as geo-redundant storage (GRS), site recovery for seamless disaster recovery (DR), load balancing, clustering, and other methods.
The company also needed to keep track of the system health and performance in real time, 24x7. The solution included the ability to link to a separate application for tracking and meeting compliance regulations, as well as integration with customer service systems.
The company’s solutions architect shared a few words with us about what drove them to decide on DataMotion’s recommended solution. “When our requirements didn’t quite line up with the available technology, DataMotion was willing and able to enhance and customize their solution to ensure we had exactly what we needed. That spoke volumes about their technical agility and commitment to their customers.”
Results and Summary
The overall result of this project is better communications between dealers, clients and CSRs, which in turn, improves outcomes at lower costs. This was done without compromising information security or customer experience. Additionally, the company is one step closer to its longer-term goal of eliminating all on-premise solutions and moving everything to the cloud. The new product has delivered significant improvements, including the following:
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Messages between clients, dealers, and CSRs facilitated from the first day, with the familiar message center interface and user experience intact
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Tracking and reporting for compliance is tied in and automated, requiring no effort from CSRs
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Enhanced client communications
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24/7 monitoring to track system health and performance
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Turnkey integration
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Automated compliance
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No retraining required
Additional cost-efficient results included the move to the cloud; this, combined with DataMotion’s managed services model, allowed the company to reduce IT maintenance, personnel, and security costs associated with their secure message center service.
DataMotion’s secure message center was a perfect fit for this company’s secure exchange and compliance needs, integrating security and compliance into the high-volume messaging and file exchange workflows that are inherent in the consumer finance sector. The company received a cost-effective “fit for purpose” solution that not only integrated with their existing interface (delivering a seamless day-one experience for customers, dealers and CSRs alike) but also allows the company to track system health and performance and report for compliance purposes. Through the Azure deployment, the company is also able to utilize the latest in Microsoft technologies. In addition to building a strong foundation for efficient, secure and compliant exchanges, DataMotion’s solution has helped the company move closer to its long-term goals, including moving all solutions to the cloud.
DataMotion provides a secure digital exchange platform that redefines how organizations communicate, collaborate, and share information with their customers and partners. Leaders in financial services, insurance, government, healthcare, and call center markets leverage the DataMotion platform to accelerate their business processes. In the healthcare sector, DataMotion allows for the easy exchange of medical records that facilitate modern clinical exchanges for telehealth, homecare and large-scale solutions, enabling nationwide exchange with over 2.5 million clinical end points. DataMotion provides a suite of self-service APIs and connectors enabling enterprises, developers, software vendors and system integrators the power to create easy-to-use applications and services, seamlessly enhancing their solutions with flexibility and compliance built in. The DataMotion platform is HITRUST CSF certified.
DataMotion is headquartered in Morristown, N.J.
For more information visit us at DataMotion.com or follow DataMotion on LinkedIn and Twitter @datamotion.
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