Banks are on the front Lines when unexpected emergencies strike. Whether it's a hurricane, a fire, or a biomedical crisis, when an emergency happens, customers want access to cash reserves and bank products. However, in a crisis scenario, delivering critical services to meet customer demand presents a challenge because your own operations may be disrupted.
Think it can't happen to you? In 2005, more than 200 financial institutions were directly impacted by hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans and Rita in Texas, according to the FDIC. As of March 2006, 85 branches in those states remained closed, while another 45 were operating from temporary offices. Now nearly two years later, many have yet to fully recover,
The NASD, one of the world's leading private-sector providers of financial regulatory services, surveyed financial firms impacted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and discovered that "firms that intended to rely on call forwarding through local switching stations found that switching stations impacted by flooding could not re-route telephones. These firms suffered from inability to contact, or be contacted by, customers and employees."
To provide uninterrupted service in the face of extraordinary conditions, best-in-class financial institutions are turning to IP telephony and adopting new communications applications that the technology enables. By doing so, they are able to reroute calls over their own network without having to rely on vulnerable local switching stations.
Organizations of all sizes are embracing IP telephony to save money, improve customer service and respond flexibly and quickly to market shifts and emergencies. "Continuity of operations and the ability to respond to changing conditions are important benefits of IP telephony," says industry analyst Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates, an industry consulting group. "It can take days or weeks to get traditional phone lines installed-perhaps longer during an emergency. But with IP telephony, you can move all or part of an organization as conditions warrant, and the group is able to function just as soon as they arrive at the new site and plug in."
There are a number of advantages derived from IP telephony:
IP telephony lets you distribute the intelligence in your network so that branch offices can continue to operate in the event of a network outage. Applications can be centrally managed for better security and streamlined operations.
IP telephony allows employees to remotely access network resources when offices are inaccessible. With broadband connectivity and a laptop, PC or other mobile device, they can work from home, a hotel room or an office in another state and tap into the same communications applications they use each day at their desk.
IP telephony gives you the freedom to quickly move operations to an alternate site or establish a remote command post. All you need is wired or wireless broadband connectivity. You don't have to wait for traditional phone lines to be installed.
IP telephony gives you the flexibility to ramp up quickly to support peaks in demand during an emergency or to respond to market conditions. You can quickly add new phones to any office with a PC connection, or even access "hosted" or "on demand" IP-based communications services offered by a phone company or Internet service provider.
IP telephony enables new applications that can help you locate your employees and provide uninterrupted service to your customers. For example, automated notification applications allow you to reach people quickly-whether by pager, telephone, handheld device or email. You can broadcast a message to your employees with emergency instructions, poll those who answer and promptly access a report with the results.
The best disaster planning these days goes beyond traditional fire, flood, and earthquake concerns to Avian flu, highly contagious strains of tuberculosis and other scenarios. Best-in-class players in the industry are incorporating a wide range of solutions to support work-at-home, fixed-mobile integration, scalable conferencing and resilient dual-server voicemail architectures to strengthen the fabric of their operations. Protecting your critical communications infrastructure via IP telephony can be an evolutionary process. That means you don't have to rip out existing equipment and rebuild from scratch. Some organizations begin by incorporating IP-based communications systems at branch offices, others by building IP capabilities into their contact center and headquarters operations. Some invest in the kinds of mobile systems used by first responders in government so they can set up a contingency network on the fly and operate from virtually anywhere.
Jorge Blanco is vp, Solutions & Software Portfolio Management, Avaya.
