A banking solution with business continuity built-in

Jonathan Kafieh

August 17, 2020

Building business continuity into a banking network and communications system means business as usual—even during a global pandemic. 

What happens when banks are forced to shut their doors to customers and employees due to a global pandemic? The last time anything near this scale occurred was more than 100 years ago, and the world was not nearly as globalized as it is now. Today banks rely not only on the interaction of people in the local office, but also the interaction of those from all around the world. While it’s always been a little more challenging to communicate with colleagues half way around the world, a strong network definitely helps manage communications.

According to a recent McKinsey & Company article, ‘normalizing workforce measures’ was identified as the top priority for financial institutions as they strive to ensure business continuity during this global health and economic crisis. This includes restricting travel, adopting prevention-oriented policies, implementing workplace sanitization, providing alternative ways of working, and initiating proactive communications.

People are already adjusting to a lot, so making an effort to keep business operations as close to normal as possible only makes sense. As an essential services provider, banks need to ensure the measures they adopt address the needs of their customers and communities, and are feasible from an infrastructure perspective. These include call-center capabilities, work from home support, and even emergency services.

While there are solutions to these challenges, financial institutions require a response that can be up and running quickly while also not requiring a total infrastructure overhaul. The good news for banks with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise infrastructure is that business continuity is pretty much built into their network and communications systems making operations pretty much business as usual.

ALE business continuity solutions are easy and quick to implement. Recently, an ALE banking customer was able to keep the bank’s processes up and running by quickly setting up employees with IP phones and remote access points to provide secure communications from their homes. Remote access was also established seamlessly for contact center agents allowing them to work from home with ease, ensuring transparent business continuity for customers and the bank. The new phones provided to the remote staff also incorporated the employee’s home address into the 911 system to prevent emergency calls from going through the bank office and instead routing directly to the employee’s home—which is very important.

The bank manager was able to get employees and the call-center up and running quickly thanks to ALE’s easy implementation. There was no requirement for extensive discussions, nor time dedicated to creating a business continuity map. The ALE solution provided built-in business continuity enabling the bank to keep employees safe and provide customers with confidence in today’s uncertain times.

Learn more about ALE business continuity solutions.