Scalable Communications
We have achieved improved user mobility through teleworking, allowing employees to use the same extension number to access the functionality they’d enjoy in the office whether they are working from home another branch office or any location. We’ve also benefited greatly from “mobile twinning” where a call from a mobile phone can easily be transferred to a desk phone and vice versa, meaning they can be contacted automatically wherever they are.
Bank of Cyprus
Bank of Cyprus has been established in the UK for more than 50 years and operates from locations in London and the Midlands. Bank of Cyprus UK specialises in corporate and business banking services to small and medium-sized business entities, personal banking services to owners, directors or employees of corporate and business customers and personal banking services to high net worth overseas residents.The Bank has been a long standing customer of Scalable Communications when it first invested in an Extreme Networks IP infrastructure in 2000. In 2006, the bank decided that the infrastructure was in need of an upgrade in order to meet Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations and support its future business strategy.
Investment objectives
The client’s existing IP telephony solution, provided by Cisco, had helped the company achieve inter-site cost savings through toll bypassing, however, the Bank felt the system was offering limited functionality in terms of improvements to customer service and employee working practices and was keen to explore how IP technologies could help it realise further benefits beyond the initial call cost savings.
“At the core of our success is our commitment to customer service. With customers becoming increasingly sophisticated when it comes to how they communicate with their bank and a flush of new financial institutions entering the market offering to cater for customer’s every need, we decided it was time to invest in our technology to make sure we could maintain our competitive edge and continue to deliver the first rate customer service for which we are known" said Demitris Demetriou, Technical Director of Convergence, Bank of Cyprus UK.
Not only was the bank interested in how IP technologies could help it improve its customer service, but also how it could enable flexible working practices for employees. By enabling staff to work when they want, from where they want, the bank wanted to be able to retain valued staff and recruit the highest quality candidates through its flexible working packages.
With a remote working data solution previously implemented by Scalable Communications, the Bank realised that this approach to employees would also ultimately help it achieve its key objective of providing first rate customer service by ensuring that customers are able to contact the person they require, when they require and this could be make possible via a teleworker solution.
Another important objective for the Bank was to ensure that it continued to meet the FSA’s ever-changing regulations when it comes to monitoring interactions with customers. Like many financial services organisations, having the right communications infrastructure to achieve this without having to undertake copious amounts of analysis and investigation was also a key driver for the bank to review its systems.
The bank also wanted to consolidate its communications platforms in order to reduce costs associated with office moves, add-ons and changes.
The solution
Having reviewed propositions from other vendors, including Cisco and Reuters, a Mitel solution was selected due to its superior functionality, resilience and its reputation for smooth migration due to its ability to integrate with the existing infrastructure and ease of installation, causing minimal disruption to the day to day running of the business.
A Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) was installed at the Bank’s Southgate head office branch, to support 100 users, while the Bank’s other main London branch, was equipped with a Mitel 3300 ICP to support its 45 users and to enable it to act as a backup to the main office.
The Bank’s other three London branches at Seven Sisters, Palmers Green and Camberwell and its Birmingham outlet were also linked to head office with a further four Mitel 3300 ICP’s enabling distributed branch controllers with a centralised backup.
The Bank also invested in a Mitel Contact Center, Mitel Your Assistant, Mitel Teleworker, Mitel Mobile Extension and Mitel Enterprise Manager.
Security is an integral part of building any modern IP network, even more so in a banking environment when handling personal customer data. Juniper Firewalls were therefore put in place, making the implementation a fully converged secure, voice and data solution.
Working in a live environment, a key requirement from Bank of Cyprus UK was to ensure minimum network down time and impact to services. With this in mind, as much preparation work as possible was carried out during working hours, with out of hours data and voice network outages agreed with Bank of Cyprus in advance in order to carry out migration tasks.
A particular challenge on the data side with this approach was the space available to install hardware in parallel to the existing infrastructure. In order to resolve this, all Extreme Networks data switches were configured at the Bank of Cyprus’ premises in Southgate, while remote site switches were then shipped to their respective premises in order to be installed.
The solution was implemented on a new MPLS network. In order to provide inter-site connectivity this required appropriate changes to be made not only on the data and voice components within the Bank but also entailed management of third party suppliers for the MPLS network. For example, activity sequencing on the project changed during the executing phase to accommodate issues that arose and some changes to dependencies that were outside the control of Scalable Communications occurred.
However, with an experienced project team used to working with third party suppliers to deliver complex implementations, all sites were successfully migrated by Scalable in line with the agreed timescales and budgets.
Return on Investment
Since the solution went live at the end of 2006, the Bank has already seen a significant return on investment through improved customer service, increased staff retention and job satisfaction and operational cost savings.
“The changes to the way we communicate have already been extremely well received by employees and customers. Customers receive an enhanced experience the minute they call the bank, with a sophisticated set of call routing options which takes them straight to the person or department they need", said Demitris Demetriou, Technical Director of Convergence, Bank of Cyprus UK.
“We have achieved improved user mobility through teleworking, allowing employees to use the same extension number to access the functionality they’d enjoy in the office whether they are working from home another branch office or any location. We’ve also benefited greatly from “mobile twinning” where a call from a mobile phone can easily be transferred to a desk phone and vice versa, meaning they can be contacted automatically wherever they are.”
“These enhancements have greatly improved our service already, as customers only need to know one phone number to contact their business relationship manager directly, regardless of their location”, he added.
Furthermore, integration between desktop PCs and phones has been achieved using Mitel’s Your Assistant. This allows employees to dial directly from a PC and check on their colleagues’ availability whether they are in the office or on the phone. Voicemails can also be received via email, further integrating the voice and data infrastructure.
In addition to the customer benefits of the Mitel Contact Centre, the Bank is now able to easily recall recordings of customer conversations, should it need to investigate to report to the FSA. Previously, this was an extremely time-intensive process, whereas FSA compliance can now be easily achieved, an essential ingredient to the success of any financial services sector organisation.
The Bank has also seen a significant reduction in its operational costs. Before implementing the Mitel solution, to move, add or change a user extension cost the Bank £75 every time – far from ideal for a busy bank with employees frequently moving site or desk and new staff joining the company. Now, due to the Enterprise Manager element of the Mitel solution, the Bank’s IT team can simply make the changes themselves in a fraction of the time it previously took.
“In addition to our original project objectives, we have also greatly improved our business continuity through the IP implementation, an area which, as a financial services organisation, is of great importance to us. We now have a fully resilient system, where if there is a failure at one site, all phones will continue working through our backup platform. And in the event of a disaster, with our new teleworking capabilities we also have the option of employees working from home as well as at our disaster recovery site, added Demetriou.
“It is core to our business strategy that our technology supports our proposition as a modern, forward thinking Bank. With the implementation of the new IP solution, we can live up to that promise and have a solid platform on which to continue to develop our customer service capabilities as our strategy evolves in the future,” he concluded.
For more information on The Bank of Cyprus, visit www.bankofcyprus.co.uk
0844 7422010
