A recent succes story in the banking industry.

Needham Bank, located in Massachusetts, is a private bank providing high quality services through its five locations. The bank has had a rich history within the area since 1892 and prides itself on personalized service and deep community involvement.

Recently, Needham Bank began expanding and has grown to a staff of over 170. As the bank grew in size so did the issues that its employees were having with passwords. End users at the bank need access to several different systems and applications in order to properly assist customers. “End users became frustrated at the number of disparate passwords they had, and the frequency they would have to enter the user names and passwords,” commented James Gordon, First Vice President of Information Technology at Needham Bank. It was also frustrating when employees had to halt what they were doing and contact the help desk to reset their password if they were locked out.

Customers also became frustrated, as they had to wait for bank employees to sign into each application separately, which was time consuming. It also led to security issues due to employees keeping a ‘password sheet’ with each set of their credentials written down in order to remember them. Additionally, IT was frustrated at the amount of password reset calls they were receiving. On average they had to perform around 10-20 password resets a day, which became tedious and took time away from other projects they needed to focus on.

Drastic Reduction in Password Related Issues

Needham first implemented Tools4ever’s Self Service Reset Password Management (SSRPM) to allow employees to reset their own passwords without having to contact the helpdesk. They simply answer several security questions, which they previously provided answers for during initial enrollment, and are able to securely reset their own passwords. This drastically reduced the amount of password related calls the help desk received and allowed employees to quickly complete the process and continue with their work.
Due to the success experienced with SSRPM, Needham then decided to implement E-SSOM to further mitigate their password issues. “We had already used SSRPM and over the years it worked flawlessly. We expected the same from E-SSOM,” said Gordon.

Customization

During the implementation of E-SSOM, Tools4ever worked with Needham Bank to ensure that the solution worked with all of their unique applications. Many of the applications in place run on various codebases and include web applications, java-based applications, legacy Windows applications and many more. “Tools4ever was with us through the entire process, making sure to get it right, and tweaking E-SSOM along the way to fine tune it in our environment,” commented Gordon.
E-SSOM now allows employees to log in with a single user name and password, and thereafter gain access to all systems and applications for which they have authorization, drastically reducing the login time.

Improvement in Customer Service

With a single set of credentials, employees no longer have to write down their passwords in order to remember them, which has resulted in greatly improved security. E-SSOM has also augmented customer service at Needham Bank, by allowing employees to avoid signing into multiple applications. In addition, if employees do need to reset their passwords, they are able to quickly do it themselves and continue assisting customers. “Employees are able to focus on the customer rather than on their computer,” said Gordon.
Overall, E-SSOM and SSRPM have allowed employees at the bank to focus more on their customers and less on their password issues. “I now view E-SSOM and SSRPM an irreplaceable part of our network infrastructure and core to how the business will operate moving forward,” said Gordon.

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