Wealth Management Firm
DataMotion utilizes the secure message center APIs and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to integrate seamlessly into the financial services (finserv) company’s existing Customer Experience (CX) Platform to secure exchanges and meet compliance regulations.
Background
This project was conducted on behalf of a major financial services (finserv) company known for its extensive asset management, advisory and insurance services. With more than $875 billion under management and administration, the wealth management firm’s network of roughly 10,000 financial advisors serves more than 2 million individuals, businesses and institutions from across the globe.
Challenges
Replace a critical software platform with secure message center functionality integrated via API into a high-volume client services portal – ensuring seamless advisor support, complete access to past messages, no disruption to familiar communications – all while advancing data security compliance.
Requirements
- Maintain and improve secure message center functions within the client services portal
- Keep the approach of using REST application program interfaces (APIs) for controlling the secure message center
- Migrate 2TB of client-advisor message data and attachments from the legacy system
- Provide access to migrated client-advisor message history in each active mailbox so clients would not see any difference
- Keep current active mailboxes, since a full “rip and replace” would be too costly
- Meet all compliance requirements in one of the most highly regulated industries
- Migrate the service to public cloud infrastructure without compromising security and performance
- Launch the new solution in 6-9 months
Secure Message Center
With no time to waste, the company immediately put out an RFI. The hope was to keep its basic infrastructure largely the same and switch to a new secure messaging solution – a “lift and shift.”
The deployment window for a project of this size was tight, to say the least. DataMotion, a leading provider of data privacy and security solutions, was already on the company’s radar – and its experience integrating secure message center solutions via its comprehensive APIs turned out to be the perfect fit. Unlike offerings from other vendors, DataMotion’s secure message center solution – deployed in Azure and managed by the company – met all the requirements and then some.
Foremost, DataMotion offers flexible secure messaging REST APIs, critical to swapping out the legacy messaging software. This allowed consistent operation of secure messaging and file transfer, while enabling the solution to integrate into the finserv company’s existing infrastructure and webmail interface of the client services portal. Only the discontinued software would need replacing – no large scale “rip and replace” of the portal or other critical enterprise infrastructure would be necessary (a vastly more expensive proposition that accompanied the proposals from other vendors).
Deploying the system on Azure enabled DataMotion to take advantage of the latest available Microsoft technologies to ensure scalability in a cost-effective way using such features as geo-redundant storage (GRS), site recovery for seamless disaster recovery (DR), load balancing, clustering and others.
Another critically important function is a state-of-the-art advanced monitoring system deployed by DataMotion to keep track of the system health and performance in real-time, 24×7.
For the new solution, secure messaging as a service is delivered through the DataMotion Platform. This includes the ability to link to a separate system for audit trails and meeting compliance requirements, as well as integration with customer service systems.
“The best fit for us would be taking our existing services and swapping out the previous product logic that we communicated with – and that just wasn’t possible with other vendors,” explained the company’s solution architect. “With DataMotion, we could. We were able to still use our mailboxes and they had the APIs we needed to manage our message center. It was the ideal solution.”
Lastly, the project required not only the right technology, but the right team working together. DataMotion worked smoothly not only with the company’s personnel, but with their systems integrator. When the company identified two areas where DataMotion’s solution didn’t quite seem to meet their needs – importing messages and managing drafts – the DataMotion and systems integrator teams collaborated well to fill the gaps in the solution.
“DataMotion said, ‘Alright, we’ll be able to do that, and in fact, those services actually make a lot of sense for our product,’” described the company’s solution architect. “That was one of the big drivers for us. DataMotion was willing to enhance the solution to make sure we had exactly what we needed.”
Advanced monitoring system
State-of-the-art advanced monitoring system deployed by DataMotion to keep track of the system health and performance in real-time, 24×7
Secure Data Exchange
Ability to link to a separate system for audit trails and meeting compliance requirements, as well as integration with customer service systems
Results
One of the keywords for the entire project was seamless. The whole transition absolutely had to be a non-issue for customers and advisors alike. On this front, the project succeeded wildly.
- The solution from DataMotion was successful from the outset, handling 10,000 messages between clients and advisors on the first day.
- Push notifications are now integrated into the system.
- Reporting for compliance is also tied in and automated, requiring no effort from advisors.
- The project also helped the company take one more step towards a longer-term goal; eliminating all on-premise solutions and moving everything to the cloud.
“Our client didn’t want to stand up another interface and we agreed; it would add complexity, was cost prohibitive and would be disruptive for both plan members and service reps… There were other tools that could have fit, and we did give them a hard look, but DataMotion had stronger, more flexible technology, a pricing advantage and a proven track record with us.”
