VALECARD slashes operational costs by up to 30 percent

VALECARD is a credit card, fleet, data services and consulting company that offers services for a wide range of industries, including finance, agriculture, real estate and healthcare. VALECARD partners with customers to find new solutions to minimize costs, automate processes and provide a better quality of life for consumers. Based in Uberlandia, Brazil, the company employs more than 400 people.

Initially seeking disaster recovery solution for security and availability

For its primary business, VALECARD provides corporate customers with a prepaid financial card that employers use to offer benefits to employees. Throughout Brazil, VALECARD has distributed three million financial cards, and 60,000 merchants accept these cards. Consumers prefer this trend toward “digital cash” and the replacement of physical money because financial cards are easier to control. VALECARD administers all aspects of the card for its corporate customers and its nationwide consumers.

VALECARD sees its business based on three pillars: the financial capacity to support operations, an extensive network of card acceptance and a robust and flexible IT infrastructure. Each year since 2009, VALECARD has increased revenue by 40 percent, and the organization wanted to maintain this momentum by implementing high-performing technology that would differentiate it from competitors.

The company’s systems must execute speedy payment authorization. When customers use their financial cards, they wait at the supermarket or at a shop for VALECARD to authorize their transaction. With 200,000 transactions per day, VALECARD needs to be readily available and able to quickly authorize payments and record transactions internally.

Because financial cards are essentially cash and are so prevalent throughout Brazil, security and availability are most critical. VALECARD holds a tremendous responsibility to ensure consumers’ balances are updated and accurate at all times. Therefore, the company initially sought a solution focused on disaster recovery.

Project scope expands when client sees IBM PureSystems family capabilities

VALECARD initiated a study to find the best disaster recovery solution that would also provide outstanding performance. IBM presented a solution that included IBM PureFlex System Enterprise technology and an IBM Flex System x240 compute node from the IBM PureSystems family, in addition to an IBM Storwize® V7000 disk system and IBM System Storage® TS3200 Tape Library. The company was able to fully integrate the solution with its historical data.

When VALECARD saw that PureFlex System technology could not only provide a solution for disaster recovery but also much more, it began expanding its project scope. The organization was interested in incorporating PureFlex System technology into its infrastructure so it could install a disaster recovery system, cloud computing technology and high-availability infrastructure.

With these additional solution capabilities, VALECARD wants to make its processes more agile and bring more automation to its customers. In fact, the business realizes that PureFlex System technology has so much processing power that it may eventually assume the company’s main operation.

Cloud-based solution cuts operational costs by up to 30 percent

As well as finding a disaster recovery solution, VALECARD is experiencing numerous additional benefits since implementing PureFlex System technology.

The PureFlex System solution provides seamless scalability, always-on availability and an up to 30 percent reduction in operational costs. Jose Geraldo Ortigosa, operations manager for VALECARD says: “IBM PureSystems gives us freedom to grow, increases our availability, allows the creation of a hot environment for disaster recovery and puts the company in the right direction by using new technologies such as cloud computing.”

With a cloud-based solution, the company no longer needs to travel to the customer’s location to configure technology; the customer can simply download the product from the cloud and easily and securely install it. VALECARD can deliver its product faster, with less effort and for less cost.

Because PureFlex System technology is scalable, VALECARD now has a well-defined technology growth strategy, something that it lacked previously. The PureSystems family solution provides the capacity to support the organization’s 30 percent to 40 percent annual growth rate while providing faster time to market for customers and enhanced reliability and speed for consumers.

Because VALECARD has a comprehensive solution and overall stronger systems, the company also gains a competitive edge. Luiz Abreu, director at VALECARD, explains: “Working with IBM and PureFlex System, we expect to make our processes more agile, bringing more automation for our customers and for our employees who perform tasks in the field. This will improve our performance and market integration.”

For more information

To learn more about IBM PureSystems offerings, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/puresystems

To learn more about VALECARD, visit: www.VALECARD.com.br