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Providing one million loans a year, Stater handles close to 40 per cent of all mortgages in the Netherlands. It is the largest mortgage service provider in the Netherlands and a 100 per cent subsidiary of ABN AMRO.
To make the processing of this volume of mortgages as efficient as possible, the company launched a new “Working Together Now” initiative to align the way they work with modern working practices. “The mortgage market is characterised by the demand for increasingly rapid access to all data. You need access to the latest information at any time,” Frank Veldink, ICT Infrastructure Architect at Stater, explains. “Our board launched the ‘Working Together Now’ strategy to offer our employees an innovative approach to flexible working.
“There are no workstations, only devices that allow for flexibility. This encourages home working.” To accomplish this, the company partnered with Dutch provider, Avensus, to adopt Citrix Workspace.
“Using Citrix Workspace means our staff can work from any location, at any time, on any device, and always return to the same virtual work environment,” Veldink says. “This has allowed us to keep pace with a considerable increase in staff numbers, whilst still providing our one million customers with the rapid response they expect during the mortgage process. The performance and stability of our work environment has been greatly improved.
Continuous, secure access to data
Thanks to the Citrix Workspace solution, based on Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, XenMobile, NetScaler and ShareFile technologies, Stater’s 1,400+ employees have continuous access to data from any location, at any time. Meaning staff can now respond more quickly and efficiently to their client’s requests without compromising data security.
“Our management were aiming for a flexible and efficient way of working, but we had to make sure it was reliable,” Veldink says. “With Citrix Workspace, we know we have optimal security, which is vital when handling the sort of sensitive financial information that Stater does.”
Stater’s external parties and intermediaries also have secure access to the latest data. "Our customers rely on our environment and because they can also gain access, this adds value to our services. The customer knows that our environment is secure.”
More agility for IT
Lukas van Eeden, Purchaser at Stater, says Citrix Workspace not only helped the company keep up as it almost doubled staff, but it benefits IT, as well.
“The new way of working has caught on in a big way at Stater,” he says. “The IT team are able to proactively monitor the new environment. This has reduced the impact on our customer service. This functionality, along with being able to provide a very flexible workplace for a large number of users, is exactly why we chose Citrix Workspace. It had to be seucre, stable and always available.”
Better mobile control
Citrix Workspace also helps Stater to optimise its mobile devices.
“We can now manage our telephony centrally,” Veldink says. “Previously, we had unsecured traffic, for example, when staff accessed their email via a private smartphone. This left us open to potential threats, but was impossible to manage on such a large scale. Now, access is only possible via XenMobile. This has simplified and centralised mobile device management, making our clients’ data more secure.”
A positive user experience in a modern environment
“We’ve had a very positive reaction from our staff,” Veldink says. “The Citrix Workspace environment is faster, always available, stable and extremely user-friendly. And the best thing about it is that users say they don’t even notice it because it always works. It’s modern, user-friendly and it always works.”