Caso de Exito - Banco Itapua (English)

Exchange Online Caso de éxito

Maximum productivity and cost savings with a cloud-based e-mail platform

Summary Region: Paraguay Industry: Financial Customer Profile A financial institution with over 40 years' experience in the market, 22 customer service centers in major cities, and a broad portfolio of products and services for customers.

Initial Situation The organization used an Open Source application and e-mail infrastructure which were no longer able to meet the growth in the bank's needs.

Solution Implementation of Exchange Online.

Benefits  Increased staff productivity.  Greater agility of communications  Cost savings thanks to videoconferencing  Report generation and compliance with ISO 27001.  High service availability and excellent performance.

"We are the first financial institution in the country to adopt a cloud-based e-mail platform and we're extremely satisfied with Exchange Online. We can also use this tool to promote our people's talents."

Hugo Alberto Santacruz Lopez, Security Officer

Banco Itapúa is a leading financial institution in Paraguay, with 22 branches throughout the country. The bank needed to connect and further integrate personnel by upgrading its Open Source e-mail application which it had been using for years, and thus took the decision to migrate to Exchange Online. This allowed the bank to speedily improve communications and upgrade its collaboration environments as well as achieve significant cost savings. In addition, it increased security levels so that service management and compliance with monitoring requirements are now much easier. The platform allows the bank to design new technology projects with a view to modernizing the company.

"We will achieve savings in terms of mobility, as now we can hold videoconferences at our facilities involving different people and workgroups, or make presentations to the Board, without needing to move our officials around, which also protects their physical integrity."

Hugo Alberto Santacruz Lopez, Security Officer

Situation The Banco Itapúa de Paraguay is a financial institution with over 40 years' experience and 22 branches in different cities throughout the country. It has a broad portfolio of products and services which include personal, agricultural and commercial loans, home and car purchase loans, savings and savings deposit certificates, as well as checking accounts, credit cards, debit cards, money transfers, payment of public and private services and wage payment facilities, among others. The company has about 300 employees.

Each one of its product lines requires intense activity in terms of information flow, consultation between areas, requests for authorizations at different management levels, as well as other internal dynamics that make e-mail a critical tool. The banking regulatory authorities also tend to ask for reports about customer data management.

"Before, we had an application hosted on local servers in our own data center, an Open Source solution which for a given period of time was able to fulfill the required functions.

However, we reached a point of growth where we needed to upgrade features that were not viable in terms of the cost-benefit ratio. And we were also having some problems receiving messages from mailing lists that werenecessary for us, while the issue of storage was also beginning to be a problem," says Hugo Alberto Santacruz Lopez, Security Officer at the Banco Itapúa. Specifically, they encountered limitations in storage capacity which also meant that the corporate image of the bank could not be properly implanted (because they couldn't use a standard e-mail signature).

Updating security policies, account administration (opening, closing, blocking etc.), the receipt of certain file types (noncompatible formats) and monitoring the flow of e-mails became a highly time-consuming exercise.

Solution Senior Management at the Banco Itapúa decided to implement Exchange Online as the principal platform for communication and collaboration across the organization.

"We understood that Exchange would cover our needs and more; we also believed that Microsoft provided the necessary reliability for a service of this nature, and that we would be able to take full advantage of the integration with other Office applications we use every day," explains Pedro Antonio Larroza Cabrera, Manager of Information Technology.

In financial terms, it was cheaper to implement this option in the cloud rather than host it onsite. From the technological point of view, updates can be applied immediately without requiring the intervention of bank staff. This also includes any additional security measures such as antivirus and antispam, various kinds of controls and compliance reporting, monitoring and auditing. Finally, there was the time factor, which was significantly shorter.

Roberto Bresani, Manager of the IT Audit department, adds that " the support we received for the process to implement and configure the entire environment was very important, as both Microsoft Paraguay and the Olam Group –the certified partner which contributed its knowledge and experience– gave us the confidence to begin to seriously use a cloud service, which was a new experience for us."

"In addition, it was significant that we were able to comply with ISO 27001 regarding the confidentiality and security of customer and company data.

For us it was very expensive to have the kind of infrastructure required to meet our needs for continuity of operations while also complying with these regulations."

Fatima Sotelo, Manager of Legal Affairs and Recoveries

"With the support of the Olam Group, we created all the user accounts in Exchange Online very quickly, configuring group policies and the necessary permissions.

offering substantially greater storage possibilities which are commensurate with our needs and which can also be flexible if we need to upgrade," says Hugo Santacruz .

We also implemented a series of automated controls so that we could be alerted when someone was reaching their quota limit in any box, or if another aspect of the infrastructure required special attention," adds Hugo Alberto Santacruz Lopez, Security Officer. Specifically, the tasks undertaken were the management and supervision of the migration of MX records, the migration and configuration of personal accounts, configuration of generic accounts, creation of distribution lists, configuration of automatic signatures, configuration of SMTP services for mass mailing (statements, etc.) and scanned documents. They also created mail flow rules, managed integration with other service tools (contacts, tasks, calendars) and trained personnel how to use and manage the tools.

"We now have the tools to generate reports related to auditing processes and security mechanisms (ISO 27001) as required by our authorities and our own corporate governance policies. Furthermore, they have greatly simplified the management of everything related to e-mail, including the creation of new accounts, backups, antispam, anti-virus and anti-malware control, and thanks to the automatic updates, we always have the latest version available," says Roberto Bresani.

"In addition, it was significant that we were able to comply with ISO 27001 regarding the confidentiality and security of customer and company data. For us it was very expensive to have the kind of infrastructure required to meet our needs for continuity of operations while also complying with these regulations.

Exchange Online gave us exactly the right solution," Sotelo expands.

Benefits "We are the first financial institution in the country to adopt a cloud-based e-mail platform and we're extremely satisfied with Exchange Online. With this tool we can promote the talent of our people, by helping them to achieve greater integration through the more widespread implementation of videoconferencing, in addition to shared agendas and storage spaces, the professional design of the e-mail layout and reliable operations. This solution provides us with the High Availability we need for a service which is critical for us, as well as

There has also been a positive impact on the bank in terms of the savings achieved on its investment, which has allowed financial resources originally allocated by the ITAPUA Bank to technological infrastructure to be redirected towards other projects, of which the most important at the moment is the upgrade of its core banking servers.

Indeed, with Exchange Online the environment can grow without needing to purchase or commission new equipment, which considerably speeds up the operation.

IT personnel, originally increasingly absorbed by the problems affecting the e-mail platform, are now available for more value-added tasks, whether for internal or external users.

Meanwhile, users can use the local Outlook or Outlook Web Access from anywhere on any device, with permanent access to contact lists, agenda, to do lists, while news from mailing lists or user password recovery functions are automated. Furthermore, the compatibility of this system with the most widely-used applications by staff, such as Microsoft Excel, is total and seamless. And last but not least, the bank is benefiting from a better corporate image as its signature design has now been unified.

For more information For further information about Microsoft products and services, visit: www.microsoft.com/paraguay About Banco Itap煤a, visit: www.bancoitapua.com.py About Olam Group, visit: www.olam.com

This case study is published solely for general information. MICROSOFT OFFERS NO GUARANTEES, WHETHER EXPRESSLY OR IMPLIED HEREIN. Document published in March 2016

Concerning the advantages of implementing Skype For Business, Santacruz L贸pez adds that "we will achieve savings in terms of mobility, as now we can hold videoconferences at our facilities involving different people and workgroups, or make presentations to the Board, without needing to move our officials around, protecting their physical integrity."

"We are already working to implement the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) program and also to synchronize Exchange with Active Directory. We will gradually take advantage of all possibilities offered by Microsoft, with the support and advice of Olam," concludes the executive.