Today's business, consumer and operational demands have changed. The world is very different from several years ago, technological advances are far more available, and we need to open our minds to truly accept this new era. Technology is not just a component of business transformation – it is critical to a successful outcome.
Though cloud computing has been a reality since before the dawn of the 21st century, banks, credit unions and the financial industry, in general, have been slower to adopt the trend of moving business applications to the Cloud. While cloud platforms are popular, they are not yet ubiquitous. Previous concerns surrounding data privacy, regulatory compliance and resource allocation all contributed to banks and credit unions staying with legacy, on-premise applications.
However, this hesitation for cloud adoption has eased within the banking sphere. Adopting cloud-based applications has now become a very popular strategy and direction for more institutions when evaluating their business infrastructure and processing environment.
IMM and The Cloud
IMM began embracing the cloud revolution with the release of IMM eSignCloud, the hosted version of the flagship eSign solution. Now, due to the overwhelming receptivity to Cloud solutions, we have created a company cloud-first strategy. We’re actively working towards providing all IMM solutions in the Cloud as well as migrating our legacy customer base to our cloud platform.
Adoption has been on a steady incline in recent years ushered in by the ubiquity of cloud offerings (think Google, Microsoft 365, Amazon, Salesforce), the significant enhancements to security and the increased demand for both location and device independent access to services by employees and customers. This last element became critical in the earliest days of the pandemic and has remained no less – and possibly even more – important.
Our newer solutions are only being designed and brought to market as cloud-based solutions. The first example of this strategy is eReceiptsPlus, our groundbreaking digital receipts product that provides for the electronic delivery of receipts to consumers via email and text, but also enables smartphone-based signing of receipts using a text-based zero footprint interface—perfect for drive-thru or call center use cases.
IMM is Cloud-First – Why?
So many of our clients, both longstanding and recent additions, are now embracing the model. For those who want to understand more, here is a brief overview of the many benefits of cloud-based solutions for financial institutions in general, and with IMM specifically.
One underlying and important fact to remember is that IMM focuses exclusively on financial institutions so why we adopted a cloud-first strategy that takes into consideration all things that should be paramount in every bank or credit union’s long-term technology plans.
Cost Savings
With a cloud solution, there is no need for the institution to acquire, maintain, update, replace or manage its own servers. By offloading the often hidden or overlooked costs associated with operating systems and supporting system software, databases, virus protections, firewalls and more, significant savings can be realized by an institution.
Data Replication and Backups
The Cloud offers an added level of data protection and automation for your bank or credit union. At IMM, our cloud infrastructure handles all necessary data backups without intervention from your organization. Additionally, integrated data replication ensures uninterrupted business operation and continuity.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Since the Cloud is always available, the need for traditional disaster recovery and business continuity planning is removed. At IMM, our cloud service meets the highest standards for business continuity, so there is no need for your FI to cover our applications as part of your business continuity plans.
Security and Protection
Integrating to the Cloud leads to increased security and protection for your FI. IMM's cloud solutions utilize Azure AD as a central part of the security access and authentication. Thus, your FI has a supplemental layer of security above and beyond what would be available with a traditional premise-based solution.
Automatic Software Updates
A cloud-based solution enables the service provider, IMM in this case, to regularly deliver software upgrades, maintaining state-of-the-art product quality without disrupting live production. In our cloud-based implementations, the latest updates, patches, feature enhancements and more are applied to the solution automatically by IMM. Using an Agile development approach, the delivery of product and feature enhancements on a higher frequency is now possible.
In some instances, there may functionality available in the cloud version that is not yet available in the premise version. For example, a new feature, web hooks, was released to enhance the download of completed documents on a timelier basis and is currently only available for cloud-service clients. Web hooks is just one example of useful features that premise-based solutions cannot take advantage of, unlike cloud solutions that will be automatically updated with the newest capabilities.
There are more benefits associated with moving to the Cloud that go beyond this blog. However, by switching to the Cloud, your FI can save money, increase security, add a level of automation and acquire a more cohesive strategy for your organization that premise-based solutions can't offer.
Let IMM Help Your Financial Institution
Given current business situations, transitioning from legacy software and embracing cloud adoption are logical steps. It becomes a must-have step for business continuity and an investment that pays off quickly for financial institutions.
If you're interested in learning more about moving to the Cloud, we're here to help. Our dedicated and knowledgeable team of implementation specialists is ready to work with you and your financial institution to migrate existing IMM premise solutions to the cloud as they become available.
Please reach out to your IMM representative to learn more about the many benefits of cloud-based applications.
