WSTA Ticker - May/June 2008 - (Page 12) By Leonard Selvaggio In an industry that takes advantage of technology to shave seconds from transaction times, communications effectiveness is critical to success in financial services. The growing interest in unified communications (UC) is fueled by the desire to take business to the next level by simultaneously streamlining and optimizing communications events and integrating them with business processes. With a single, corporate phone number extending across multiple communication media, the trader is instantly accessible to clients, and in turn, has access to the same directories, dialing plans, and information when he is mobile as he does when he is in the office. Intelligent presence and skills-based knowledge applications help financial services professionals quickly know who among their pool of resources is available and how to connect to move a transaction forward. Today, UC is being used in the financial services industry to help connect the right people with the Enhancing Business Processes with UC right information at the right time. At a recent Let’s further examine how today’s financial industry conference, the managing director for services industry can enhance business processes strategic technology at a major by using UC-based solutions to New York firm said, overcome process delays or “Deploying Unified human latencies arising in Communications today is akin day-to day-operations and about margin calls, accounts, or to investing in email years ago. interaction. It’s not a choice, it’s an market activity are late or don’t imperative.” What began in the 1990s as If communications come at all, customers and new workflow automation has Unified communications advanced to more prospects leave and their eliminates the barriers that sophisticated process traditionally exist between management, event processing business may be lost forever. different channels, networks and business automation. Yet and devices. Merging even with these powerful communication media such as voice, email, tools, weak links in the chain can still cause process messaging, presence, audio and video conferencing delays. At any point in a business transaction, and more over a common, IP network and making processes can stall if a particular employee is them accessible regardless of device or location unavailable, uninformed, or snowed under with improves communication flows. other work. Process delays can lead to lost financial Setting the Baseline with Seamless Communications With UC, companies can significantly reduce or eliminate delays in responsiveness and transform key business processes. For example, to connect with their constituents and resources, many traders must deal with a complexity of disparate devices such as desk phones, Blackberry™ or smart phones, instant messaging, turrets, email, pagers, computers and specialized intercom systems. Unified communications integrates these capabilities to deliver seamless communications to a trader – thus enabling more rapid-fire actions. A trader can maintain a single contact list and calendar synchronized across all of his devices. services sales and erode customer satisfaction and confidence. If communications about margin calls, accounts, or market activity are late or don’t come at all, customers and new prospects leave and their business may be lost forever. To meet this challenge and deliver improved client services, an extension of unified communications, called Communications-Enabled Business Processes or CEBP, is emerging. CEBP embeds communications into business processes to automatically and effectively connect people when and where they are needed. CEBP builds alerts and notifications into the daily internal processes of a financial services firm. Alerts can prompt employees into action, but they are also a Continued on page 14 WSTA® Ticker - May/June 2008 12
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