MILWAUKEE, Wis.–One corporate credit union is detailing how planning ahead has greatly assisted its work-from-home efforts.
In Wisconsin, Corporate Central Credit Union and its affiliates, Emergifi, InterLutions and QuantyPhi, are reporting they began enabling work from home with planning for digital transformation and a migration to the cloud in 2017. At the time the stated goal was to achieve an “anywhere, anytime, on any device” goal in business resiliency efforts, Corporate Central said.
“This meant all staff would have the ability to work from home, which is paying off during this time. The transition to working from home during the pandemic was seamless and there have been no service disruptions for members or clients,” according to the company.
Corporate Central said all employees have laptops and all applications and tools are in the cloud.
“By using Microsoft 365 Business Premium, all digital documents and files are in the secure cloud-based OneDrive and SharePoint,” Corporate Central said. “Microsoft Teams is used for company-wide communications and collaboration. Groups, teams, and individuals use Team’s chat channels for daily operations. A cloud-based phone system allows for voice, video, conferencing, and web meetings, which means ‘phones’ follow employees everywhere by using a softphone and headset.”
:When the virus started becoming a more serious concern, it was comforting to be able to have all staff work from home, which we have been doing since March 16,” said Chris Felton, president/CEO of Corporate Central. “We always considered business resiliency important to be able to provide uninterrupted services for our members. I never really thought about the peace of mind aspect when faced with a pandemic and being able to immediately have all staff working from the safety of their homes.”
Additional Steps
Corporate Central said it has also taken additional steps to ensure employee efficiency, comfort, and security include equipping employees with large monitors and keyboards to improve the home-work environment. The company reported staff received care boxes filled with treats, similar to those found in the breakroom. IT performed external vulnerability scans on employees’ home networks to ensure networks did not include any open ports or vulnerabilities in routers, modems, or firewalls.
“Digital transformation and cloud adoption continue and it’s easy now to see the benefits,” said Gregg Tushaus, president of Emergifi. “We enable anywhere, anytime, any device work. Many clients are already using Microsoft 365 for secure email, file sharing, storage, online meetings, and chat. These services are bundled into Office 365 along with best-in-class productivity apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and enterprise-grade security. With Office 365, you can work from anywhere, on any device.”