BCM One

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO of PAYOMATIC, the largest alternative financial service provider that focuses on the New York market. We provide different financial services, including check cashing, prepaid cards, and money orders to our customers. We work with different stores in the five boroughs in New York.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with BCM One?

With 140 stores, we have to provide a completely redundant, highly available network for transactional processing. Everything, including the home base, has to be connected with highly available data circuits because everything happens in real-time between the POS and back office.

We were using an older provider that provided an MPLS solution that was expensive and slow. We worked with BCM One to get redundant data circuits from a whole slew of different carriers and to manage the rollout and bidding.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We built an SD-WAN implementation using our internal engineering to connect all of our locations together using the data service we brought from them. We basically have 280 distinct connections shared across every site.

What is the team composition?

There is a single point person. There’s some management involved as well because of the size of the project.

How did you come to work with BCM One?

We work through a provider familiar in the space that makes introductions for services. We had a past relationship with one, and they helped us find BCM One. We narrowed it down to three or four different partners, but BCM One seemed like the best fit with what they offered.

What is the status of this engagement?

We signed the contract in September 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Their services have been very helpful. There have been certain situations where we’ve had to use wireless rather than hard data, and they’ve been able to get us everything we’ve needed.

The rollout and build were a little slow, but I don’t think that’s their fault. Managing and working with five or six different telco providers in New York during COVID-19 is a lot of work.  

It’s been slow and cumbersome to get through, but we’ve been able to roll everything out. We ended up saving a lot. They’ve been great about monitoring all of their work too.

How did BCM One perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a meeting with them each week. Their project management could use a little more improvement, but I don’t blame them since it’s a difficult thing to coordinate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

BCM One was willing to work with us. They were flexible, and we got through everything pretty well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They probably could be a bit more organized.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go in knowing what you want to do. We found that worked well with them. We provided them as much as we could, and they were pretty flexible. You would get the best deal if you went in with everything you have.