The company Jack Henry & Associates may not mean a lot to you or I on the surface (pun intended). However, what the company provides means a lot to the Surface team and may eventually mean a lot to us. Jack Henry & Associates offers over 300 products targeting the core processing services for more than 11,300 financial companies. The company’s products provide financial institutions the tools to process transactions and automate their businesses in the changing landscape of banking.
Last year Jack Henry & Associates and Microsoft introduced an innovated new product fine tuned for the banking industry. The result was a new software tool called Branch Anywhere for Windows and the Surface Pro 3. According to the Surface team, “The Branch Anywhere app allows banks to centrally manage all aspects of customer info and allows bank employees to become mobile branch managers who can better meet their clients by safely and securely accessing important customer and account information from any location.”
Part of the appeal for the Branch Anywhere app is the ability to deploy the software from anywhere. With a Surface Pro 3, the software/hardware relation becomes very symbiotic. Paired with the lightweight and transformative nature of the Surface Pro 3, the Branch Anywhere app experience is enhanced by providing employees the mobility and power needed anywhere they happen to be.
The pairing of the Branch Anywhere app and the Surface Pro 3 is receiving positive feedback from early adopters like Florida Integrity Bank and IBERIABANK. Banking IT Pros are starting to see the argument for incorporating the Surface in existing processes. The Surface team also adds, “From an IT perspective, Surface easily fits into a bank’s existing processes for supporting computer hardware–saving them considerable time and money.” More and more banks are gravitating towards the use of the Microsoft Surface to help transform their branches while also providing greater mobility to their employees. The ‘One-device’ proposition of the Surface can lead to savings in device cost for IT Pros and software compatibility also saves time on retraining.
“With the recent launch of Jack Henry & Associates’ new Branch Anywhere application, there’s a natural fit with Surface to jointly help customers in the new world of branch transformation,” says Cyril Belikoff, Senior Director—Microsoft Surface. “Because of its combination of mobility and power, Surface has seen great success with banks that are looking to transform their branches or provide greater mobility to their employees. Customers—many of whom had previously been forced to deploy both iPads and laptops to their users—can achieve everything with a single Surface device. With the recent announcement of the new Surface 3, these financial institutions now have multiple options with Surface to meet their different needs of their varied employees. We believe that our work with JHA truly helps to offer a ‘best of breed’ combination of software and hardware that financial institutions can build around.”
What’s more telling, is that Jack Henry & Associates are successfully piloting the program internally with actual Surface Pro 3 devices. Microsoft and Jack Henry & Associates have also partnered with CDW to create a purchasing portal for Jack Henry customers to obtain Surface devices with special bundled software discounts. According to Ben Weiss, Director of Financial Services Sales with CDW, said:
“We see great value in the market resulting from our effort to work closely with Jack Henry & Associates and Microsoft. The customer solution the two organizations can now offer will no doubt enhance the experience of financial services customers. CDW is excited to contribute to this offering by delivering custom solutions to fit each customer’s particular needs.”
Many times in collaborative situations like these; a partnership is a strategic endeavor that ends after the check is signed. With Jack Henry & Associates and CDW hawking the Surface to enterprises, the future of Microsoft’s hybrid PC seems very promising.