San Diego County Credit Union Optimizes Business and Increases Performance with GWFax
Background
San Diego County Credit Union (SDCCU) is San Diego’s largest Financial Institution with 21 branch locations, over 154,000 members and over $2.7 Billion in assets. Founded in 1938 to provide deposit accounts and loans to the employees of the County of San Diego, member service and client dedication is the priority at SDCCU. The organization’s collaboration infrastructure uses Novell's GroupWise in the aim to provide sound financial services to Credit Union members anywhere, any way, any time.
Challenge
The big challenge for the San Diego County Credit Union IT team was "to get rid of the agony that goes along with faxing," in the words of Sean Azhadi, Vice-President of Technology. "On a daily basis, different departments receive different faxes containing specific information that is submitted to them. As we are a Novell shop, I wanted to find a way to integrate all the fax-related activities with GroupWise.
"The issues that we were facing were to be able to automate fax routing and direct incoming faxes to the various departments, preserving at the same time the confidentiality of the information. We wanted the faxes to be stored securely rather than just lying around in the fax machines and not to have employees wasting time by walking to and from the fax machines all day long," continues Azhadi. “Moreover, our primary objective was to ensure that our members and business partners would not be subject to the frustrations related to getting a busy signal when they are trying to send a fax."
Solution
Azhadi learned about GWFax from Messaging Architects at a Novell BrainShare event. He saw the potential benefits of rolling out GWFax in his institution in terms of optimizing business continuity and increasing performance in the different departments.
Once the GWFax server was deployed, the Credit Union IT team immediately took advantage of some of the native GroupWise automation tools. They set up a GroupWise mailbox in each of the five departments, specifying a rule that automatically routes any incoming fax to a designated folder shared among the employees who process these faxes. Once a fax is received, a notification is sent to everyone, thus guaranteeing uninterrupted continuity of the workflow.
One of the departments, which deals with car loan approvals, disseminates weekly rate information to hundreds of car dealers via fax. The process of outbound faxing was greatly facilitated by leveraging the integration of GWFax with GroupWise. The database with fax numbers was imported into the GroupWise address book. When a fax needs to be sent, the user goes to the GroupWise address book, form where the fax numbers of the required recipients are selected. Everything is automated and quick; a fax status notification is sent for any rejected fax.
To complement GWFax, San Diego County Credit Union deployed the Brooktrout 24-port TR1034 intelligent fax board to take advantage of the benefits of V.34 digital faxing. The intelligent fax board ensures fax transmission speeds of nearly three times of traditional fax modems. The Brooktrout board also provides SDCCU the optimal bandwidth for both incoming and outgoing faxes and practically eliminates busy signals.
"As an organization running GroupWise, we value your partnership with Novell and appreciate your strong presence and visibility at Novell-related events and GroupWise communities. We feel comfortable with your product and we are ready to explore the implementation of other Messaging Architects solutions" concludes Azhadi. "GWFax exactly meets our needs. Productivity and efficiency have dramatically increased. We have ensured that our employees receive the inbound forms in a timely and secure fashion, send outbound documents in a systematic and automated mode, and our members are served in the best possible manner."
