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Unified Communication enables Lakshmi Vilas bank to unite branch locations

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Onkar Sharma
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Lakshmi Vilas Bank is a private bank with over 400 branches and more than 800 ATMs  acrossthe country. As the bank expanded, it was finding it difficult to coordinate between branches and employees in different locations in an effective manner. There were challenges of real-time collaboration and a lot of time and money was being spent on travel. Given these challenges, it was important for the bank to upgrade to a system that helped it minimize expenses and increase collaboration to maintain its position in the increasingly competitive banking industry.

EMBARKING ON A UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS JOURNEY

To fulfil its objectives, Lakshmi Vilas Bank had no choice but to digitize its operations. However, finding the right solution to address all its problems was an uphill task. The IT team evaluated several options and after much deliberation, the bank decided to deploy a Unified Communication system. “Unified Communications system serves as an all-in-one communication platform, which enables effective communication between branches, offices, and support desk,” says M Manikandan, Deputy General Manager-IT, Lakshmi Vilas Bank.

The UC system helps in instant messaging, video conferencing, audio conferencing, and email which was the requirement at the bank’s premises. Apart from these requirements, the bank was also looking for a solution that could help achieve a few other objectives. “We wanted a solution that could help us increase human resource productivity,” informs Manikandan. In addition, it wanted to ensure that the solution could address its one of the biggest problems—travel expenditure and hence save time. Plus, the bank was wary of the regulatory pressures. It wanted to keep a record of each and every communication—email, IM, video conferencing, audio-conferencing, etc. Thus, the bank was looking for a solution that could offer it agility and help it manage its knowledge resources.

PICKING THE RIGHT SOLUTION

The market is full of solution providers in the Unified Communications

category. This added to the bank’s problem as it had to do extensive research to see which solution met its requirement. After evaluating various products in the space, the bank chose Microsoft solutions.

“We decided to deploy Microsoft solutions in order to achieve the envisioned objectives. Microsoft Lync was deployed for instant messaging, video conferencing and audio conferencing, whereas we used Microsoft Exchange for email solutions. Today, Microsoft Lync and email services are integrated, thereby allowing users to save the conversations as emails,” reveals Manikandan.

The bank went to implementing the solution in a phased manner to achieve all its objectives and bring agility to its operations.

The new solution has enhanced the human resource capability because of the effective use of Unified Communications among employees. The system is now used for knowledge sharing and collaboration across the organization. It helps the employees to extend helpdesk operations, enable video chat between branches, head offices, and other reporting offices. It enriches the helpdesk

experience and has also improved the productivity.

REAPING THE BENEFITS

While the bank spent about `22 lakh on the deployment of the project, it was able to achieve most of the objectives. By deploying a Unified Communications solution, the bank has begun to see improvements in productivity through easy access to information and collaboration tools. It is hopeful that the integration will further simplify IT management tasks and reduce the total cost of ownership. With Exchange Server 2007 and its unified messaging capability, the bank has gained an end-to-end Unified Communications platform, which combines voice mail, fax, and email in one inbox. Users today have the

same messaging experience regardless of whether theyare accessing emails using their workstations, portable computers, or mobile devices. Further, new graphical and command-line interfaces of the Exchange Server 2007 system offer improved manageability and increased automation while integrated tools simplify maintenance.

By deploying Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, the bank has achieved a simplified and easier-tomanage network infrastructure that is cost-effective, flexible, and scalable, providing the bank with automated provisioning.

Through the Unified Communications solution, Lakshmi Vilas Bank is able to provide financial advice to prospective customers without the need for experts to travel for face-to-face customer interviews.

ACCELERATING THE DIGITAL DRIVE

The bank has also deployed MPLS and VPN to digitize all its operations. “Our bank is running business operations on a flat network of MPLS architecture, datacenter, disaster recovery site, and critical locations having the robust Cisco platform with high availability mode,” says Manikandan.

Today, the bank is able to run its operations efficiently across branches and is able to offer quality services to its growing customer-base, competing effectively with the global and domestic banks on all fronts.

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