CAMPUS USA Credit Union

Key Stats

• Over 350 employees, 20 dedicated to IT
• Serving 125,000 members with 18 branches
• Over $60,000 saved in equipment replacement

Overview

The Meraki platform makes our networking better, more manageable, simpler, and more structured.

BRIAN FISHER

VP of Technology Services, CAMPUS USA Credit Union

The first credit union on a U.S. college campus, CAMPUS USA Credit Union now serves over 125,000 members around the world. They’ve built their legacy on delivering the best possible experiences for customers by providing exemplary service and exceptional value. CAMPUS USA employees are encouraged and empowered to make a positive difference, not only in the financial lives of their customers, but also in the communities they serve.

Challenge

The CAMPUS USA vision is all about experience, empowering employees to deliver the best experience to their customers. But what does “best” mean? What does it look like? 

The answers to those questions go beyond the face-to-face experience between employees and customers. Delivering the best customer experience means creating a smart space that can seamlessly evolve with the customer’s needs, such as in-branch Wi-Fi, seamless online banking, and digital check-ins. It means ensuring a high standard of service behind the scenes, where customers aren’t directly interacting with staff.

The sensor solution has been working great for us; we have one single dashboard for graphing, history tracking, and insight into how the data closets in our branches are doing.

BRIAN FISHER

VP of Technology Services, CAMPUS USA Credit Union

Behind the pristine front-of-house in each bank branch, CAMPUS USA was dealing with a vast array of different, inconsistent networking equipment. The lack of cohesion and visibility meant a high chance of risk. Those risks included the possibility of devices and servers crashing, overheating, and being exposed to floods, humidity, and other weather variables, all of which would result in downtime for customers and thus, a subpar experience. The team needed a way to gain reliable and responsive insight into the security of their back-of-house technology to prevent these disasters from happening and impeding their vision. 

Brian Fuller, VP of Technology Services at CAMPUS USA, was also looking ahead with a two-year plan to expand branches as well as their headquarters with improved, cohesive technology. With providing outstanding customer service as a primary goal, Brian and his 20-person technology team began taking steps to evolve the back-of-house technology.

Solution

It was clear that CAMPUS USA needed an environmental monitoring system that could ensure their back of house was operating just as smoothly as the front. It was paramount that this new system be simple to install, intuitive to manage, and cost effective. Brian and the team decided to partner with Meraki on a range of cloud-managed sensors. They chose to deploy the temperature and humidity sensor, the open and close sensor, and the water leak detection sensor, which they were able to install and get up and running in just 20 minutes per branch location. 

The CAMPUS USA team was happy to have their sensors on the same monitoring system as their wireless LAN, switching, firewall, and other Cisco Meraki products. This meant no more disconnected devices — everything could be tracked, monitored, and managed seamlessly through the Meraki dashboard. This unification of technology devices behind the scenes also helps create a consistent branch-to-branch experience for customers, which reinforces the CAMPUS USA vision. 

The team can now rest assured knowing their IT equipment is protected and that the customer experience will not be affected because of servers crashing and getting damaged. And with the intuitive single dashboard, the CAMPUS USA technology team can now manage all of their Meraki products in one place and customize the dashboard experience to include alert types based on their needs.

Results

Just a few months after installing the sensors, the team received an alert from the temperature sensors. Unbeknownst to the team, the air conditioning was shut off in one of their facilities on a Saturday. After receiving the temperature warning alert, the team was able to remediate the issue. Had the alert not been received, the equipment could have overheated and Campus USA could have lost $60,000 worth of hardware. More importantly, they would have not been able to provide the financial services that their customers depend on until the outage was corrected. Brian describes this ability to alleviate downtime and loss of revenue with the Meraki sensors as “priceless.” 

Through partnering with Meraki, CAMPUS USA now has peace of mind that their vision of providing an outstanding customer experience will not be at risk due to technology failure. Looking forward, Brian and his team are planning on implementing Meraki MV smart cameras for occupancy monitoring in future branch locations and also have plans to integrate the Meraki full stack at their headquarters.