The banking and financial services industry is one of the highest paying telephony customers in SA, with some of the larger institutions paying call cost bills in excess of R10 million per month. However, according to Unison Communications MD Craig Young, increasing the complexity of communications infrastructure is not the solution.
Unison Communications has implemented its locally designed and developed Galactrix solution at a number of SA`s leading banks, insurance houses and financial institutions, with immediate results.
"Advising clients and providing information about their infrastructure means that in the future they can make informed decisions about whether new technology will suit their needs or not. Galactrix has allowed them to build a communications model around their plans."
Young says large distributed institutions like Rand Merchant Bank, First National Bank and Absa were all able to manage and track all aspects of their telephony infrastructure immediately after the implementation of Unison`s solutions.
"We provided a highly sophisticated call costing solution with an advanced billing system that drastically reduced inaccurate account allocation. This meant precise reports allowed for accurate forecasting of budgets. Now, 99.9% of communications costs can be accounted for.
"Being able to break down costs and make decisions based on real-time reports means these institutions can plan ahead and avoid the black hole of communications costs," continues Young. "The system allows for centralised management and decentralised administrative functions."
While banking institutions are often seen as the early adopters of highly sophisticated communications technology, Young says CFOs resignedly increase each year`s communications budget to deal with costly voice networks running into hundreds of millions per annum.
According to the Ernst & Young international telecommunications survey, Breaking Away, financial stakeholders believe cost savings will come about through better leadership, IT systems, business processes and decision support. The report also states that financial decision-makers feel they need new organisational structures with better financial discipline.
Young agrees that making financial decisions instead of technology decisions is the way to reduce spiralling costs. "CFOs can make decisions that will bring clear and immediate cost savings instead of compensating by investing in increasingly complex infrastructure. In many cases, administration of disparate systems creates redundant procedures and a duplication of staff and infrastructure."
The main problems experienced by banks and other large financial organisations, says Young, are inaccurate reporting, manual processing and outdated information. In addition, call bills are often incorrectly allocated and billing departments are not able to recover costs. This means budgets are not met, which leads to future budgets being based on estimates and inaccurate statistics for the entire organisation.
Young argues that bringing down communications costs requires more than a telephone management system (TMS). "In the past," he says, "TMS was limited to producing billing reports. Now, what is required is enterprise-wide call monitoring that can be used to create technology and financial decisions as well as a way to consolidate information about the infrastructure."
Customer service requirements and high levels of administration result in high internal and external communications costs. Young says savings and value are realised when infrastructure is analysed and optimised. "The answer is not to simply change or increase infrastructure; what is needed is information about the kinds of interaction taking place over the infrastructure, and reports that show how to optimise it."
Share
