Johannesburg, 17 May 2007
Every organisation is seeking to better satisfy the needs of its customers, and is therefore always looking for ways to increase its overall effectiveness within its marketplace, as well as becoming more efficient internally.
Part of this process, inevitably, involves evaluating various means of reducing unnecessary expenditure.
This concept is particularly true within the banking sector of the financial services market, since financial institutions seem to attract more flak than any other group of companies when it comes to costs.
One of the reasons for this is that the South African banking sector is a dichotomy of supply and demand. Its levels of infrastructure and technological advancement matches or exceeds that of many first world banking sectors, yet it serves a market that is very small, relative to international standards, with a clientele substantially less affluent than elsewhere in the world, with over 60% of them earning below R4 000 per month.
In addition, the companies within the sector are faced with the challenge of growing their market shares in uncharted waters, since over 60% of the population is still 'unbanked'.
The FirstRand Banking Group, which includes First National Bank (FNB), the second largest banking entity in SA, is no exception to the above scenario, and has identified its overall expenditure on voice communications as an area in need of management, analysis, evaluation and possible subsequent attention.
"We believe our spend on voice communications to be extremely high and in our view, higher than is necessary," commented Aziz Cassim, Head of Hogan Technology at FNB. "We have a very complex voice network and one that continues to grow apace. It currently consists of our own infrastructure, together with those provided by Telkom SA, the various cellular providers and other data carriers; and thus a platform to properly manage these various cost structures is desperately needed.
"Consequently, we have given top priority to this focused area of our business and have engaged Unison Communications to undertake this particular project.
"Unison Communications has a long standing relationship with FNB," continued Cassim. "As the market leader in voice infrastructure management analysis and call-billing analysis, they already have a good understanding of our business challenges, and some of their resources are already on-site.
"In addition, Unison Communications also supplies services to other entities within our group, such as at our head office building, FNB Bank City, Home Loans and Wesbank. Our intention is to work towards a consolidation of these platforms that would satisfy our overall objective of a true, centralised voice-management environment."
The branch banking area (about 700 branches) of FNB was chosen to be the top priority sub-sector for this activity, a process that involves an on-going analysis and understanding of the volumes associated with its voice traffic.
This analysis will include identifying the various cost centres associated with the voice traffic charges, and comparing these with the current cost allocations, budgets and controls that are currently in place. In addition, the usage of the current technology infrastructure will be examined and monitored.
"With our thorough understanding of call billing analysis and voice infrastructure management within enterprise networks, we have embarked on this long term strategic project," concluded Roman Szulc, Sales Director of Unison Communications. "Our objective is to enable the FNB group to identify changes, consolidations and optimisations that would ensure effective management of its voice network infrastructure and subsequently achieve significant cost reductions in line with the overall group strategy."
For further information, please contact Roman Szulc: (011) 797 3002, fax (011) 797 3102, e-mail roman@unison.co.za.
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