Company

Bank of Cyprus UK has operated successfully in the UK for over 55 years. Today, Bank of Cyprus UK is a focused business bank serving the needs of UK SMEs and owner managed businesses. To finance its business lending, Bank of Cyprus UK has built a reputation for offering UK retail customers attractive products, consistently competitive interest rates and a first class service.

New FSA requirements

Bank of Cyprus UK and Scalable have a long-standing relationship going back to 2000. In 2006, Scalable had implemented a Mitel IP telephony system, which not only supported the bank’s contact centre, but also enabled more flexible working practices for staff.

However, as a result of the run on Northern Rock, and the spectacle of people queuing in the street to redeem their savings, the FSA had introduced new regulations. “In order to meet the new FSA requirements we had to be able to handle a large number of calls concurrently,” says Demetris Demetriou, IT Operations Manager, Bank of Cyprus UK. “Whilst the call centre system Scalable had implemented previously was perfectly fine for our previous requirements, it could only support a maximum of 30 calls at a time, which wasn’t enough for the new regulations.”

As the bank had done so often before, it turned to Scalable for help. After its experts had evaluated what was available Scalable proposed My Inbound, a cloud-based telephony service, combined with a SIP trunk.

Cloud-based solution

“The solution Scalable proposed was incredibly flexible and we were able to keep our existing 0845 number,” says Demetriou. “All incoming calls are now routed through My Inbound and then to us via a SIP trunk. If  all our call centre operators are busy, we have the  option to provide announcement services and/or let callers leave voice messages, which are then delivered  to us via e-mail.”

The My Inbound solution can handle up to 200 calls but, in the event of an emergency, it can quickly be scaled up to 1,000 calls. It is also very easy to manage using an intuitive, web-based interface.

There are also other benefits too. “With My Inbound we can handle more calls on the same number of lines,” explains Demetriou. “The solution also gives us comprehensive statistics about the level of service we are providing. In addition, we can very quickly divert calls to another number for disaster recovery purposes.”   

Hot standby

At about the same time Scalable also helped Bank of Cyprus UK strengthen its disaster recovery plan for its main business applications and call centre.

“For a number of years we’d been using a service provider for disaster recovery,” says Demetriou. “If there had been a disaster we would have had to take our backup tapes to its site and load them onto a clean AS400. The whole process would have taken 6-12 hours. With the way the business had progressed it was deemed to be too long. We needed a hot standby.”

Once again, Scalable’s experts assessed the market place and came back with a proposal. Following the implementation by Scalable, Bank of Cyprus UK now has a hot standby AS400 sitting in an Equinix data centre, fully connected to the Bank of Cyprus UK network at all times by an Exponential-E Wide Area Network (WAN). Data from the Bank of Cyprus UK data centre is constantly replicated to the standby. “Scalable was instrumental in recommending the solution we now have in place,” says Demetriou. “By implementing the solution for us, it has reduced our recovery time from up to 12 hours to one hour.”

Completely transparent

Having a solution for providing access to corporate applications in the event of a business disruption is an important part of business continuity planning. However, for Bank of Cyprus UK, it is also vitally important that its call centre can be back up and running quickly if there were problems with the building it is housed in.

On behalf of Bank of Cyprus UK, Scalable provides a business suite that has 30 PCs pre-loaded with the bank’s software image. The suite is not only connected to the Exponential-E WAN that links the Bank of Cyprus UK offices and its standby server at Equinix, it is also linked to Bank of Cyprus UK’s Mitel telephony solution.

“In the event of disruption to our call centre and having to re-house the operators, the solution Scalable is providing for us means it would be absolutely transparent to both our customers and staff that we had a problem,” says Demetriou. “We know it works because we’ve tested it.”

An easier life

Thanks to Scalable, Bank of Cyprus UK now has a business continuity solution that meets its requirements and that it can be completely confident in.

“When we asked Scalable to look for a solution for us they really did their homework,” says Demetriou. “They went to the market and looked at what options were available. They took the initiative to look for companies that could help us and then designed the final solution. We approached our current supplier and one or two others, but no-one even came close to proposing the full solution we needed and showing how they would implement and manage it for us.”

“In addition, having one supplier that designs, implements, manages and supports the full solution for us makes life so much easier,” continues Demetriou. “We have one contract, one invoice and one point of call for support of the complete solution.”

Complete trust

Having worked with Bank of Cyprus UK on many projects since 2000, Scalable has a good understanding of the business and how it works.

“We’ve been working together for 11 years now and we have complete trust in the solutions Scalable proposes and provides,” says Jonathan Wood, Head of Systems, Bank of Cyprus UK. “Scalable always makes a point of understanding what we are trying to achieve so, when they put forward a solution, we know it will meet our requirements. We do ask other companies for proposals but, as well as understanding what we need, we’ve always found Scalable to be competitive on price.”

“Technically, Scalable’s consultants and engineers are very good,” says Demetriou. “From a support point of view we know their engineers and being able to talk to the same people saves us having to explain the background each time. Also they have very close links with the vendors so, if they can’t fix a problem, they can escalate it very quickly. I would recommend Scalable to anyone.”

At a Glance

Solutions

My Inbound cloud-based telephony
Improved disaster recovery strategy through:
•    Server hosting at Equinix
•    Disaster recovery suite at ICM, via Scalable
•    Exponential-E high speed WAN
All solutions managed and supported by Scalable

Benefits

•    New FSA requirements met
•    Faster recovery time for corporate applications
•    More robust call centre business continuity plan
•    Ability to switch calls between different centres almost instantly.

For more information on The Bank of Cyprus, visit www.bankofcyprus.co.uk