Customer Solution Case Study
/ Bank Provides More Reliable Communication at Lower Cost with Unified Communications
Overview
Country or Region:Nigeria
Industry:Financial services
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Nigeria, Bank PHB provides financial services for individuals and businesses in five countries in western Africa. It employs 3,000 people.
Business Situation
Bank PHB wanted to provide a unified communications solution that integrated its current email, instant messaging, and presence capabilities with a reliable enterprise voice and conferencing solution.
Solution
Bank PHB decided to deploy a Microsoft Unified Communications solution to provide more reliable voice and messaging capabilities, even for its employees with lower-bandwidth connections.
Benefits
- Reduced costs
- Improved communication
Bamidele Ogunmakin, Collaboration & Unified Communications,
Information Technology Division, Bank PHB
Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, Bank PHB provides personal and business banking services to customers in five African countries. As one of the top 10 financial services providers in Nigeria, it employs 3,000 workers and has an estimated asset base of U.S.$7 billion. With bank branches throughout western Africa, employees frequently experienced issues with telephony networks that were not connected to each other—and not always reliable. Although the bank had deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 for its instant messaging and presence capabilities, it wanted to create a comprehensive internal communications network that offered employees more flexibility and control. Bank PHB decided to deploy a full Microsoft Unified Communications solution that helped it provide voice over IP, web conferencing, and unified messaging capabilities to employees, while helping to reduce costs.
Situation
Created by the merger of two Nigerian banks, Platinum Bank and Habib Nigeria Bank Limited in 2005, Bank PHB provides financial services such as loans, credit cards, savings, investments, and mortgages for individuals and businesses. With branches in Nigeria, Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, Bank PHB is one of the top 10 financial services institutions in Nigeria.
To help its 3,000 employees communicate across bank branches, Bank PHB had deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 email messaging and collaboration software, and with the help of Microsoft Certified Partner Dimension Data, it had deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 for its instant messaging and presence capabilities. Although the bank was satisfied with both of these solutions, it still faced challenges with voice communications between the bank branches. At its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria, it relied on a traditional private branch exchange (PBX) system for employees to place calls, but at branches in other countries, employees had to rely on their own separate telephony systems, which were expensive and sometimes required an operator to connect calls between networks. Employees at some branches also had problems communicating with other locations because only low-bandwidth networking connections are available.
Bank PHB was impressed with the instant messaging capabilities available to its employees through Office Communications Server 2007. It wanted to improve on this solution by providing additional capabilities, such as voice over IP (VoIP), web conferencing, and unified messaging.
Solution
To provide more instant, comprehensive communications for its employees, Bank PHB considered a unified communications solution from Microsoft because it had already deployed Microsoft solutions, such as Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, Active Directory, and Microsoft Office 2003. It believedthat a Microsoft solution was the answer because it could more easily integrate the solution into its current network and because the solution was ultimately more cost-effective than other solutions as it did not require additional hardware and licensing. “Cost is always number one, then functionality, and then integration with our existing functionality,” says Bamidele Ogunmakin, Collaboration & Unified Communications, Information Technology Division at Bank PHB.
To extend VoIP and conferencing capabilities, the bank upgraded to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. For that deployment, it again enlisted the help of partner Dimension Data. “Dimension Data knows our network, and they made the integration of the network seamless,” says Ogunmakin. Dimension Data used a gateway to tie into the bank’s PBX system at its headquarters in Lagos, enabling direct inward dialing throughout the organization from this central location. The bank is currently offering voice capabilities through Office Communications Server for 1,500 employees who are using softphones with headsets.
To enable web conferencing through Office Communications Server, Bank PHB also deployed Microsoft Office Live Meeting. Bank employees use web conferencing to conduct internal training and hold team meetings. They are also using desktop sharing in Office Communications Server to collaborate and share information during meetings, and the help desk uses it to provide technical support for the staff.
To complete the unified communications solution, the bank upgraded to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and deployed the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client for employees. It enabled Exchange Unified Messaging for 1,500 employees, who can now receive and manage both voice-mail and email messages through their Outlook inboxes.
Benefits
By upgrading to a fully integrated Microsoft Unified Communications solution, Bank PHB has been able to reduce telephony and travel costs, with the potential to further reduce maintenance costs for phone systems at local branches. It has also improved communication for its employees by providing conferencing and desktop sharing capabilities even to branches with lower-bandwidth connections.
Reduced Costs
With the voice and instant messaging capabilities in Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Bank PHB employees can use their computers to communicate with colleagues over the Internet, meaning that the bank saves money on phone charges for calls between branches, especially those in different countries. The bank also saves money because they no longer have to pay for new phone extensions. “With Office Communications Server, they can make calls directly from their computers,” explains Ogunmakin. “The cost of headsets is much less than the cost of a phone and an extension.”
Bank PHBhas also reduced the cost for internal training—including travel—by using web conferencing and desktop sharing to hold training sessions for employees at branch locations.
Improved Communications
Combined with the instant messaging and presence capabilities in Office Communications Server, desktop sharing and web conferencing have greatly improved communication between Bank PHB staff members. “With our first implementation of Office Communications Server, communication was more instant,” says Ogunmakin. “With the upgrade to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, communication is always instant. People don’t have to wait for an email to share information through an attachment; even those people with low-bandwidth connections find the conferencing and desktop sharing capabilities very reliable.”
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