Credit union supports rapid growth, digitalizes member services, and generates revenue with Aruba ESP

When Alabama ONE’s leadership embarked on a significant business growth and digitalization strategy, the financial services institution’s IT team realized its legacy network needed an overhaul.

Our wired switches were aging, we lacked enterprise quality Wi-Fi, and our wide area network for our branches was inflexible and expensive,” explains Bobby Umfress II, Director of IT Infrastructure & Operations. “Achieving our institution’s business goals required us to modernize.”

Aruba ESP Powers High-Touch, Personalized Service

As the provider of financial services solutions to residents of 18 counties across an urban and rural landscape, Alabama ONE has provided banking and wealth building options for more than 70 years by giving each of its 50,000 members high-touch, personalized service.

“Whether a member visits a branch, banks online, or uses our app, we require a high-performance, automated, flexible, and cost-effective networking infrastructure to ensure we meet member expectations,” says Umfress. “We set out to invest in a solution that would enable our lean IT team to support a mobile-first environment and a rapidly-expanding footprint.”

Collaborating with its trusted local technology partner, Veristor, Alabama ONE conducted a series of wired, wireless, and WAN technology evaluations. This led to adopting a complete solution by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

“Long a respected wired and wireless innovator, Aruba also provided an SD-WAN [software-defined WAN] solution with advanced features and intuitive management,” Umfress says.

AI-Powered Intelligence Automates Networking

For its new network, Alabama ONE has deployed an end-to-end solution that includes a wireless network comprised of Aruba Wi-Fi 6 access points (APs) and an SD-WAN powered by Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise.

On the wired side, Alabama ONE is leveraging the intelligence, automation, and resilience technologies built into the Aruba CX Switching portfolio, with the CX 8300 Switch Series at the core and the CX 6300 Switch Series for aggregation. Edge access switches include the 2930M Switch Series.
The institution is also unifying, streamlining and automating wired, wireless and SD-WAN administration by implementing AI-powered Aruba Central for comprehensive, AIOps-enabled network troubleshooting and endpoint profiling capabilities, and Aruba ClearPass for network access control (NAC).

Reducing complexity saves on overhead

By standardizing on Aruba, Alabama ONE gains state-of-the-art cloud-delivered management capabilities, which streamlines its networking infrastructure while saving on a variety of costs.

“The competing wired and wireless solution by Cisco was more costly and complex,” says Umfress. “Plus, it required multiple different licenses that are burdensome to purchase and manage. With Aruba, the solution itself simplifies networking and the licensing structure is streamlined and all-inclusive.”

Continuity and ROI Immediately Achieved

Alabama ONE’s deployment strategy began with EdgeConnect, as it could be implemented across the institution’s existing network.

Serendipitously, the smooth two-month rollout was completed during the initial weeks of the COVID-19 closures, facilitating a productive and member-focused transition to remote work.

“We immediately received enthusiastic feedback on application performance, affirming we were on the right course,” Umfress says.

Saving 70% monthly on telecom costs

EdgeConnect also enabled Alabama ONE to eliminate its dependance on multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) backbone connectivity to each of its branches.

Instead, the institution is utilizing fiber Internet, cable broadband, and even cellular, in whatever combination makes sense for a given location. In addition, Alabama ONE now has redundant connections to each location, further enhancing resiliency, business continuity, and cost savings.
“Replacing MPLS with cost-effective, flexible options managed by SD-WAN is saving us approximately 70 percent per month on telecom costs,” says Umfress.

“That advantage that will continue accruing as we continue growing and bringing more sites online,” he adds.

Customer and Employee Experiences Mobilized

For Alabama ONE the most important networking modernization benefits are member service and employee experience improvements.

It starts with mobilizing the entire workforce. “We’ve issued laptops to everyone as their desktop device, enabling our workers to move around within a location or work at another location depending upon staffing needs,” Umfress says. “This significantly optimizes our human capital as well as improving employee satisfaction.”

Empowering employees to provide frictionless service

In branches, the institution has equipped its personal bankers with tablets that empower them to complete a new account, loan, or other application anywhere within the location, as well as complete teller transactions on-the-fly.

“Ensuring that our members can complete their business with us quickly and efficiently contributes significantly to positive member experiences,” Umfress says.

“At branches with high traffic counts, we’ve even reduced or eliminated standing in a teller line by enabling all employees to complete teller transactions on their mobile device,” he adds.

Extending all options to all members, every day

As an institution dedicated to providing rural populations with the same banking products and services that urban residents enjoy, Alabama ONE is also relying on its network to power interactive teller machines (ITMs) and a digital communications platform called Eltropy.

This enables Alabama ONE to supply the full range of their services at every branch location. In the past, some rural branches were only open certain days of the week and many lacked a dedicated professional for certain services, such as wealth advisory, mortgage, or insurance.

Now, all members, can interact with the appropriate live person on any business day. “Having a network capable of supporting ITMs and Eltropy permits us to offer very interactive across-the-desk branch experiences, for all of our banking solutions, to all of our members, every day.”

Trading Windshield Time for Value-Added Engineering

From an IT perspective, Alabama ONE appreciates the AI and automation features built into its network for enabling centralized management with always-on troubleshooting and optimization tips, endpoint client profiling and policy enforcement.

Previously, travelling to the institution’s more distant locations required up to an entire business day for resolving an issue or applying a configuration that only required a few minutes.

With Aruba Central, troubleshooting and management is reduced to seconds, with further efficiencies to come by using Central’s AIOps capabilities for AI-powered insights and network self-healing.

“Reallocating resources from driving to engineering permits us to concentrate on value-added business projects,” Umfress says.

SD-WAN Powers Resilient Banking

Rapidly and proactively pinpointing problems with carrier connections is another Aruba benefit.

“With EdgeConnect alerting us to issues and providing granular insights, we’re able to work with carriers on resolving problems quickly before users are disrupted,” says Umfress.

“In circumstances where a user would be affected, EdgeConnect also ensures the secondary circuits are optimized to prevent users from even noticing a glitch,” he adds.

Generating Revenue as a Full-Service CUSO

Beyond its own footprint, Alabama ONE is also leveraging its network provide infrastructure to other institutions by becoming a Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO). Like an MSP, CUSOs put their technology to work for others while generating revenue for themselves.

“Because we’re a credit union, we understand the business,” says Umfress. “This makes it attractive for other institutions to partner with us.”

“As we scale, we’ll be relying on the automation and AI-powered capabilities within our network for efficiencies that enable us to cost-effectively serve our CUSO clients,” he adds.

More networking innovation on the horizon

To accomplish its ongoing branch growth and CUSO development, Alabama ONE will continue building out its networking infrastructure with capabilities such as Aruba’s Dynamic Segmentation. This feature provides identity-based access control that automatically applies consistent policies for zero trust and secure access service edge (SASE) security.

Another tool under evaluation is NetEdit, for taking further advantage of the management automation capabilities within the CX Switching line. “As we continue to grow, we look forward to further utilizing CX Switching innovations for streamlining networking operations and delivering advanced CUSO services,” says Umfress.

Stronger, larger, and more agile

Today, Alabama ONE has doubled its branded locations to 22, with more openings, acquisitions and CUSO activity on the horizon.
“While many institutions paused their IT initiatives early in the pandemic, our SD-WAN, Wi-Fi, and wired networking investments enabled us to continue pursuing our growth strategy,” Umfress says.

“Our stable and robust AI-powered Aruba ESP infrastructure hasn’t just assisted us with achieving our business goals,” he continues. “It’s gone further, to ensure we could emerge from the pandemic as a stronger, larger, more agile institution.”