Posted by Jaime Hinojosa, Information Technology Officer, Elsa State Bank

Editor's note: Today we hear from Jaime Hinojosa, Information Technology Officer at Elsa State Bank, which has served Texans since 1945. Learn how Elsa State Bank overhauled its IT department to provide its workforce with the tools to be more mobile and productive.

Elsa State Bank's 20,000 customers across South Texas depend on our expertise in commercial, consumer and agricultural finance. We’re always looking for ways to better serve our customers and grow our customer base. As an IT officer, I introduce, evolve and maintain the technology that helps our 100 employees acquire more customers. Security, durability and affordability are top of mind when I’m researching a new solution.

In 2010, we looked to modernize our IT solutions. Our employees wanted greater flexibility to pursue customer leads outside of the office. At the time, our employees were using laptops and smartphones that didn’t have the security, functionality or mobile management we needed. I started researching other solutions and discovered Google Apps for Work, Google Mobile Device Management (Google MDM) and Android devices. I believed these solutions would help us achieve our goal of giving our team greater mobility with tools that not only advanced productivity but that also offered the security, central management and cost efficiency we required — I was right.

Today we use Google MDM to manage 40 Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Samsung Note tablets. These Android devices help us save time and money. One example: We used to print and ship 300-page binders for board meetings, which was wasteful and inefficient, but now, board members use Android tablets during meetings to view and share annual reports and quarterly earnings presentations.

Our employees are already benefitting from greater mobility at work. Lenders now commonly travel to construction sites to meet with customers, receive progress updates and pursue more loan opportunities. Loan officers who work away from the office can receive reminders about upcoming client meetings on their Android smartphone, locate and reach their destination using Google Maps and retrieve relevant customer documents from the cloud with Google Drive.

The security of Google Apps was essential to our purchasing decision. Since commercial institutions can be targeted by cybercriminals, protecting our customer data is especially important. Our centrally-managed Android devices help us save time and money without compromising security, and IT administrators benefit from capabilities like mobile device management. Remote administration also helps us save time and money from a pure logistics standpoint — we don’t have to be on site to solve individual problems that arise.

Before we adopted Google Apps for Work and Google MDM, our employees were clamoring for tools that allowed them to work from anywhere and better serve our customers. The integration of Google Apps and Google MDM, supported by Android devices, has vastly improved what our employees can accomplish each day. These tools have helped keep Elsa State Bank competitive amid a rapidly evolving work environment.