Financial Institutions, Inc. (FII), with headquarters in Warsaw, New York, is a financial services holding company with over 70 years in business. Presently, FII owns 5 commercial banks, an investment brokerage subsidiary and an employee benefits and compensation consulting firm. FII was initially formed to facilitate the management of 3 banks primarily owned and operated by the Humphrey family since the late 1800’s. “PremCom has been with us every step of the way.” The Humphrey’s pioneered the multi-bank holding company concept in New York. Currently FII runs 5 commercial banks including Wyoming County Bank, First Tier Bank & Trust, The Pavillion State Bank, The National Bank of Geneva and Bath National Bank. There is ongoing expansion throughout the Western New York area into the suburbs. FII has prided itself in being a community bank with a more rural focus, but FII sees the Buffalo and Rochester markets as ideal expansion locations for them. FII is very customer oriented and aims to give its clients the most user friendly, up-to-date services. When Mitch McLaughlin, Vice President of Operations for FII attended a seminar in which Peter Proulx, President of PremCom Corporation, spoke on Internet Banking, McLaughlin felt that PremCom just might be the one to help FII move forward.

FII was searching to have a thin-client network installed, which would provide all processing applications on the server as opposed to having a PC with applications loaded locally. FII requested that PremCom Corporation initially provide a complete analysis of their current network. “The need for more control and easier deployment of applications have created a trend toward thin-client architecture,” said Mike McCarthy, PremCom’s Vice President of Network Services. “After our analysis it was clear that FII would see tremendous benefits utilizing this architecture.” The design project was bid out to several companies and each came back with similar recommendations. This meant that FII would need to select the company to handle the job based on other details. McLaughlin said, “We wanted a strong partner that was going to be there for us during the design, the installation, and offer continuous support. PremCom Corporation offered proven solutions that would work and be secure when they were installed.”

PremCom Corporation, a Multi-Service Integrator based in Buffalo, New York, conducted the analysis of FII’s network and explained what steps FII should take to continue their constant goal of providing the best services for their customers. FII already had an idea of what they wanted to accomplish, but looked to PremCom for complete direction and project management. “This was a new area for us, so we knew we would need some hand holding, said McLaughlin. It was such a benefit to have PremCom so close to us.” The analysis was performed on FII’s entire network in November of 2000. PremCom’s engineers ran testing at the sites, and recorded a complete hardware inventory. The outcome of the analysis confirmed PremCom’s original thoughts of converting the network over to a Citrix thin-client network. At the conclusion of the analysis, PremCom determined what necessary hardware would be used and to what capacity FII needed to prepare. McCarthy said, “FII is able to gain from our extensive experience designing, deploying and marinating large networks. PremCom is able to contribute the process and practice we have developed over the past 10 years.” In January 2001, PremCom began the job of installing a Citrix network throughout all of FII’s 52 locations and 550 users. PremCom became familiar with FII’s long-term goals through a series of interviews. The design was based on those goals with an emphasis on expandability. The installation included upgrades on their existing Wide Area Network (routers), Local Area Network (mail server, file server), Dial Backup, ATM Configuration, printers and Internet logging. PremCom was also awarded the contract to handle FII’s disaster recovery site. In the event of an emergency, PremCom will be a node on their network, host servers and a router. They will monitor FII’s entire network from the Buffalo location.

Because of PremCom’s superior work, FII now functions on a PC environment. They brought their e-mail in-house and transitioned the entire company to the Microsoft product suite. FII’s current network now supports the ATM network, video conferencing, e-mail, check and document images, banking applications, inter-company voice communications, telephone banking, Internet access, Internet banking, Intranet and disaster recovery. FII’s network’s stability is critical to the support of their customers. McLaughlin said, “PremCom has been with us every step of the way. I am extremely pleased with the relationship we developed with them. PremCom has been proactive in offering proven business solutions that are working for us.”