A credit union's journey to reimagine banking
For one western Canadian credit union, getting ahead means staying flexible and prioritizing the needs of both their members and the agents that support them.
The goal: reinventing an outdated, fragmented IT ecosystem
As part of a multiyear vision to be a digital banking services leader, this credit union had already implemented several digital transformation initiatives, including a new website and refreshing their mobile banking experience. However, to truly deliver on their vision, they needed to reinvent their internal IT processes and move to the cloud.
The software challenge: managing too many applications and vendors
Over the years, the company had added numerous on-premises solutions from various vendors, which created a complex system of siloed applications that don’t easily talk to each other. This was particularly challenging for their contact centre, where agents often had to switch between multiple applications to answer member questions. It also added the administrative hurdle of managing the various applications: from licenses, to differing expiry dates, to testing new versions for compatibility.
The hardware challenge: labour-intensive, end-of-life equipment
It wasn’t just software that needed to change. The rising costs to manage and maintain aging on-premises equipment was a problem as well. Manufacturers no longer supported outdated hardware and in-house solutions to keep them operational required dedicated staff.
Getting expert advice to plan a bold digital transformation
The credit union turned to Bell to develop a plan to streamline and modernize its operations.
Leveraging Bell’s expertise across network, communications, cloud and security, they decided to implement Microsoft 365 from Bell – taking advantage of Microsoft Teams augmented by Bell Direct Routing as a Service for their voice and collaboration needs.
Additionally, their on-premises contact centre solution was migrated to Dynamics 365, a cloud-based solution that now serves as the credit union’s customer relationship management (CRM) service, seamlessly integrating with Teams, Power BI and other Microsoft solutions.
Trusting the experts to deliver the plan
To start, the Bell professional services team migrated the credit union’s core business functions to Microsoft 365, including email, telephony, instant messaging, finance and CRM. With these functions all on one platform – and from one provider – managing the entire IT environment became much easier. Additionally, the acquisition and management of software licenses was simplified by the adoption of Bell Business Marketplace: a single online platform for discovering and adding cloud services and solutions.
The next step was to replace their on-premises PBX system with Microsoft Teams and Bell Direct Routing as a Service. With this in place, employees could make and receive high-quality voice calls over the Bell network directly through Microsoft Teams, with no additional equipment required.
Finally, the Bell Professional Services team migrated the on-premises contact centre to Dynamics 365, giving contact centre agents the ability to look up member records, take calls, access advanced analytics and more – all from a “single pane of glass” interface.
This move to the cloud was completed within strict timeframes and with little operational downtime, so there was minimal impact on the credit union’s members and business.
Post-implementation support
Bell’s professional services experts delivered multiple training sessions over several days. They showed contact centre agents how to use Dynamics 365 and IT admins how to manage the Teams environment, including adding users and setting up call routing.
Bell continues to provide ongoing troubleshooting and support, including escalating priority tickets to Microsoft Premier Support on the credit union’s behalf. This expedites ticket resolution while providing the company with a single point of contact for questions.
Results: a modern credit union for a digital world
Since moving to the Microsoft cloud, the credit union has saved money by decommissioning many on-premises servers and desk phones and eliminating the need to manage this equipment in-house. The Bell team also helped the credit union find significant savings by rooting out and cancelling “stranded” licenses from other providers. This included cancelling licenses that were no longer in use or because a similar solution was bundled into the Microsoft solutions.
In the contact centre, agents can now access all the information they need to address member questions without having to use multiple applications – boosting productivity and efficiency while enhancing the experience for its members. They can even work remotely using Teams, allowing the credit union to enable a modern, hybrid workplace where employees can be effective from anywhere, on any device.
Looking ahead, the credit union plans to continue its partnership with Bell and Microsoft to deliver even more innovative services to its members and teams. This includes leveraging Microsoft Copilot, which brings game-changing artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into the contact centre and other aspects of their day-to-day operations.
Want to know more?
Talk to your Bell representative to find out more about our collaboration, contact centre and implementation services, or explore our collaboration solutions online.