• Financial Services
  • North America
  • Midsize
  • Premise

GNBank

GNBank is a family-owned and operated full-service bank with multiple locations serving Kansas and Southeastern Colorado communities. Founded in 1918, GNBank specializes in agricultural, business, residential, and consumer financial services and strives to grow its reputation as "The Best Place to Bank and Borrow."

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At A Glance

GNBank became a Mitel customer in 2018. Before bringing Mitel’s solutions in, GNBank faced noteworthy challenges, primarily due to the lack of a centralized communications system. The bank’s branches had a collection of separate PBX systems and struggled with integration, call and voicemail quality and functionality, and inconsistent technology stacks. Many locations used systems so old that they had no voicemail setup or phone extensions to deal with incoming calls, and with so many different branches doing their own telecom setups, service, and support had become difficult and expensive. In addition to these issues, pieces of previous systems had been left in place upon installing new ones over the years, resulting in “messy” tech stacks and wiring closets.

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Goals

It was clear that GNBank needed to invest in one robust communications system across all its branches. The solution had to be easily implemented across multiple locations and supply a reliable phone system with call control and voicemail features. At the same time, the bank needed a solution capable of integration and ease of installation that would support their growth.

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Results

While considering other platforms, GNBank chose Mitel because of the excellent service and support provided by a local technology partner, Verge Network Solutions, who audited the bank's telecommunications bills and needs and made the case for the Mitel system.

Since then, GNBank has replaced the myriad of old PBX systems with Mitel’s MiVoice Business, MiCollab, and 6900IP Phone Series and has been able to set up single-point distribution groups to allow for support and connectedness between bank branches. Operational efficiency has increased with call handling features such as auto-forwarding employee calls to office, cell, or home phones depending on their location or customer calls to different branches depending on hours of operation.

During COVID-19, Mitel’s solutions allowed GNBank’s workers to adapt quickly. The bank could send employees home immediately and have them remote-ready after a less than 10-minute Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system setup. When GNBank began a Microsoft 365 implementation, all Mitel phone functionality was seamlessly integrated with Teams.

While GNBank has expressed satisfaction with features such as the mobility of Mitel’s 6900IP Phone Series handsets and high call quality on the VoIP system, the biggest positive has been cost savings. By eliminating the multiple PBX system billings, the bank has more consistent, robust communication capabilities for significantly less cost, citing near-$50,000 yearly savings from utilizing the full functionality of Mitel’s system alone.

According to GNBank, the next step in its communications journey is taking its Mitel system to a private cloud environment with Verge Network Solutions' expert assistance. There is also interest in adding Mitel call center analysis solutions to their stack in the future.

With every system the bank has purchased, there's been a point where we wonder if we should have made a different decision. We've never felt that with this Mitel system. It's the one product we can look back on consistently and never have a regret about. 

- John Vulgamore, VP of Technology, GNBank