Helping organisations communicate

The face of business communications has changed dramatically in recent years, incorporating multi-channels and a plethora of supporting devices. But how best can companies address their communications challenges with an effective strategy?

With the emergence of new technologies, communication has become ever more complex, and an effective business communications strategy must be able to support the various channels such as voice, video and data through a variety of devices. It must enable customers to integrate their communications system with their IT infrastructure, streamlining business processes for the way effective businesses need to work today.

In response to these needs, Cisco recently announced the release of its Unified Communications system, a new suite of voice, data and video products and applications specifically designed to help organisations of all sizes communicate more effectively.

Based on the company’s Service-Oriented Network Architecture, announced in December 2005, the Cisco Unified Communications system is an open and extensible platform for real-time communications based on presence, mobility and the intelligent information network. By using the IT data network as the service delivery platform, the system helps workers to reach the right resource the first time by delivering presence and preference information to an organisation’s employees.

By integrating email, instant messaging, voice messaging, telephones, calendaring applications, web collaboration and even video, the system lowers the barriers to virtual collaboration, and in doing so facilitates speedy decision making, reduces communications bottlenecks, and boosts overall employee and organisational efficiency.

The Cisco Unified Communications system is the first true second-generation Internet Protocol (IP) Communications system. To give you an example of some of the benefits we’ve seen solutions delivering to financial institutions, State Street Corporation recently deployed a Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) Communications system that has improved network availability and response time for voice and data applications and reduced administrative and telecommunications costs for the company.

The new Cisco IP-based infrastructure is providing the organisation with enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. With a centralised and virtualised call processing and voice application architecture, State Street is prepared to add, change and grow applications, increase capacity on demand and increase the efficiency of its network administrative staff.

“Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gives us the capability to provide dramatic technology advancement while controlling costs and improving efficiency in our business,” said Madge Meyer, Executive Vice President of global infrastructure services at State Street. “For example, we have a large number of office moves. With VoIP, the phones are more closely linked to individuals, exploiting easy network mobility so we don't need a large team to handle moves, adds and changes. The Cisco solution also reduces the need to manage separate infrastructures and incur the large duplications of cost associated with maintenance and remote support of multiple locations. Cisco CallManager helps enable us to smoothly introduce a variety of productivity-enhancing applications into our phone system, such as paging, trading environment applications and intelligent contact center support."

IP-based solutions are among Cisco’s Financial Markets Solution portfolio for the financial services industry, which allow financial professionals like those at State Street to increase the value they provide their customers with improved service quality, timeliness and operations.

BOXOUT:
Financial Services Industry division:

For Europe and emerging markets, the Financial Services Industry Solutions (FSI) of Cisco Systems Inc. addresses the business requirements of retail and investment banks, operational risk management as well as insurance companies.

Our FSI solutions offerings aim to:
•Address the business issues of operational excellence, while mitigating risk across our customer’s business areas.
•Increase customer service and satisfaction through improved management of multi-channel customer interactions in order to address the banks’ needs for revenue growth.
•Provide a converged, secure and integrated IP network infrastructure, which enables our customers to better manage their operational costs and at the same time position themselves for an agile and service oriented architecture of the future.

We aim to position Cisco Systems as the leading supplier of integrated network solutions for the Europe and emerging markets financial services industry by leveraging the business value of the network and making it strategic to the growth, agility and competitiveness of our customers and partners.