Transforming IT at Elavon

Elavon, headquartered in Atlanta, delivers secure payment solutions to 1 million merchant locations around the world. To provide optimum levels of customer service, the company’s IT systems must be resilient, available and scalable. David Brattain, senior vice president of systems, EITM and production support, discusses how Elavon has achieved its goals by transforming its IT organization.

Continuity of customer service is important in any industry, but for a financial services company such as Elavon, continuity is fundamental for business growth. Our customers will not tolerate having to wait for a financial transaction to be processed: They want fast, faultless service.

Such high expectations place considerable pressure on our IT systems. To ensure a seamless customer experience, our IT infrastructure has to be reliable, scalable and always available. To deliver on all these fronts, we needed to develop a robust and integrated approach to IT management that could also facilitate business change, regulatory compliance and cost control.

As the third largest merchant acquirer in North America, Elavon serves restaurants, retailers, hotels, mail-order businesses and government agencies in 30 countries. Every day, we process millions of transactions on behalf of our merchant customers—from check and credit card payments to prepaid gift cards. Elavon also provides payment terminals, PIN pads, printers and proprietary software to be used at individual merchant locations. Any interruption in customer service impacts not only our business, but also that of our 1 million merchant locations around the world.

Like most organizations involved in transaction processing, IT is at the heart of our day-to-day operations and is critical to our ongoing success. Elavon’s IT services and systems are tightly coupled with our business goals and the expectations of our customers.

Although service-level expectations vary from merchant to merchant, they all share one requirement: no unplanned downtime. If we suffer an interruption in service and can’t process a transaction, it will have a direct negative effect on a merchant and its customers.