IP Pathways
Reliable IT Services for Success in Financial Services

With technology and regulation spurring an onslaught of innovation in the financial services industry, developing a customer-centric experience across the entire user journey is crucial. As customers today have plenty of options in choosing those who will care for their money, financial organizations must bring a perfect mix of software and managed services to improve client satisfaction, increase regulatory and internal compliance, minimize human error, and increase profits. Through such efforts, financial institutions can differentiate themselves by keeping existing customers while simultaneously attracting new ones to stay competitive. This is precisely where IP Pathways’ financial IT services become an excellent investment for financial organizations. IP Pathways provides IT hardware and software, data center, cloud, professional, and managed services to SMBs throughout the Midwest, helping IT move at the speed of business and to ensure success. IP Pathways has established strong partnerships with the leading manufacturers in the industry to combine its systems design and professional services expertise to deliver best-in-class technology. In an interview with CIO Applications, Joe Shields, President of IP Pathways, sheds light on its capabilities in providing professional and managed IT services to financial institutions.

Could you provide us a brief overview of IP Pathways?

IP Pathways is a leading Iowa-based IT services provider that focuses on delivering innovative, cost-effective, and manageable IT consulting advice and support to a diverse clientele, including financial institutions. As a value-added reseller, we provide professional services around infrastructure. As we grew, we diversified our business and started focusing on managed services for multiple verticals. Recently, we developed a cloud platform through which we provide consumption-based cloud services to our customers throughout the Midwest.

IP Pathways is a trusted partner and consultant to companies looking for computer networking, data protection, storage, IT help desk, or disaster recovery solutions. Our customers partner with us for a wide range of professional services, from architecture to implementation to day-to-day support. As an organization, we have an impressive team of experienced and certified technology consultants with real-world corporate IT environments.

We are not just a product sales organization. We are a support and customer advocacy organization. We are successful because our company is rooted in customer service and engineering excellence. When it comes to the financial services industry, we understand the need for bringing operational excellence while ensuring security and compliance in financial institutions. Although we are forward-thinking in our strategies, tactically, we are very conservative. Our team understands the compliance practices in the financial services industry better than anyone and ensure security and success.

What are the services you offer to financial institutions?

We serve a diverse clientele, including healthcare, state agencies, education, general commercial practice, and finance. The financial services industry, which consists of regional and local banks, is one of the verticals we have been serving for years. We engage with many companies that provide retirement annuity services and retirement services. We provide consulting services and capital resale services to such companies. We have focused more on services around next-generation data centers, cloud strategies, disaster recovery and compliance, and security services in the last few years. We offer a complete portfolio of solutions and services in the infrastructure and compliance arena, and serve our financial services, customers throughout the Midwest.

As we are based in the Midwest, we have many customers that require reliable disaster recovery and consulting services. Our expert engineers provide consulting and infrastructure services to such clients. Many customers offering financial services need supplemental services around specific infrastructure and data center products. When we started the data center practice, there was a massive requirement for disaster recovery, and the demand has increased with cloud adoption.

What are some of the trends you see in the market that can impact the financial services space?

The COVID pandemic has changed the trajectory of all businesses. As many of our customers in the finance service sector require secure work for home strategy, we helped them implement a successful work from home strategy. We had a long history of providing virtual desktop infrastructure solutions to our clients working in healthcare and education. By leveraging encryption technologies and security platforms, we helped our customers secure their IT infrastructure. Besides, by leveraging a virtual desktop infrastructure, we provided seamless access to their workforce. Such capabilities are significant as many companies experienced troubles in providing laptops and other remote working capabilities. When it comes to data security, organizations still struggle with compliance associated with work from home strategies. We respond to such immediate requirements and help them adapt to the ongoing crisis.

How do you identify your clients’ challenges and help them mitigate the same?

Typically, our engagement with a client starts with an introductory meeting. With that, our account management team and solutions architecture team understand the customer’s business. We don’t make any assumptions about our client’s requirements before the meeting. After the introductory session, we understand the organization’s challenges and opportunities and identify the solutions to make the organization more productive. In some cases, the services we offer can lower their operational costs and help them adapt to the pandemic crisis. Upon identifying the needs, we leverage our engineering and architecture team to assess the technical requirements and make a proposal for the client.

Could you narrate an instance that highlights the benefits brought to one of your clients after engaging with you?

We have been providing infrastructure and disaster recovery solutions to a regional bank for many years. The client didn’t build a work from home strategy post- COVID for the non-banking portion of their business. As their IT team was smaller, the client reached out to us to help them adopt a work from home strategy. We spent two days with them understanding their workflows, processes, and more. We leveraged some of their existing technology and augmented them with our cloud services. With that, we provided a virtual desktop infrastructure and helped them secure the business, which was operating remotely. Now the company has extended their work from home strategy to the second quarter of 2021. The IT team was delighted with our engagement, and they continue using our vast array of service offerings.