Security, flexibility and cost-cutting benefits promote VoIP in the banking sector

It should be considered a matter of fact that banks not only handle their customers’ finances with a great deal of care and attention, but also manage their own finances responsibly and efficiently. As a cooperative bank, the PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr eG is already well-aware of its responsibilities, particularly since a cooperative bank sees itself as having a special responsibility to its customers. The PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr is a consultative direct bank with offices in Dortmund and Dusseldorf and a bank-shop in Essen. In the fiscal year 2008, the bank’s total assets were around three billion euros. The PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr’s 220 employees advised around 185,000 German customers: Mostly by telephone. Because of the financial benefits available, and because PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr’s existing ISDN system no longer met their technical requirements, a decision was made to upgrade to an Asterisk-based VoIP telecommunications system and switch all in-house banking telephony to Voice-over-IP. Fixed-line connectivity would remain as ISDN connectivity.

Following the decision to implement Voice-over-IP for in-house bank use via an Asterisk-based VoIP telephony system, Ulf Lange was given the responsibility of finding a suitable end-user telephone device for the PSD Bank. The selection criteria were clear: The device must replicate the standard functionality of a classic business telephone whilst offering greater flexibility than contemporary devices, high voice quality and easy configuration. Additional requirements included security, user-friendliness and, in particular, the devices should be easy to use. “We required a device which is as similar as possible to the current German telephone,” explained Lange. “Many VoIP telephones are ‘Americanized’, and might have required some additional training – something which we wanted to avoid. We needed a telephone that was as intuitive to use as possible, despite all of the new functions we required such as 3-way conferencing, call waiting or connection.”

“Our customer support is first and foremost by telephone,” explained Lange. “During these calls, long lists of numbers are often discussed, making perfect clarity and understanding critical. When speaking a sentence during a telephone conversation, it is normal that individual word syllables can become distorted due to slight interference or transmission delay; but because you understand the sentence in its entirety you don’t necessarily notice the interruption. However, for the calls which our customer consultants conduct, the voice quality of every single syllable must be guaranteed. Back in 2007, when we started to plan the project, the risk was too high that a VoIP connection to external fixed line services would not always be able to reach the high levels of voice quality required for customer calls.” Consequently, the PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr decided to implement an Asterisk system with ISDN media gateways so that incoming and outgoing calls from or to customers would continue to take place via ISDN whilst the bank staff would talk to each other in-house by VoIP.

By implementing media gateways, a cost-effective and higher level of telephone system availability was also achieved thanks to the highly redundant multisite ISDN connection configuration, avoiding the technical problems which often occur with other Asterisk-based solutions combined with ISDN cards. The media gateways allowed a parallel connection from both the old and the new telephony system to ISDN so that individual departments or individuals could test operability before migrating seamlessly to the new system.

The new telephones were quickly accepted by PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr employees: “Instructions for use were rarely requested with just one or two enquiries,” reported Lange: “We are 100% satisfied with every aspect of the implementation and outcome of the project. The new system and new phones are working faultlessly.” The system changeover has greatly reduced the workload for both Mr Lange and his colleagues in the IT Department: “We can now be much more flexible,” exclaimed Lange with some relief: “It’s no longer a problem if we want to move a number to a new location or office or if a new number needs to be issued.” Lange highlighted another pleasing aspect of the project: “The calculated budget we had agreed to at the beginning of the project was kept.”

As a result of their excellent in-house experience with VoIP, Lange has not excluded the possibility of switching all of PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr’s telephony to VoIP in the future: “Every quarter, we learn about new voice quality improvements for our IP phones and infrastructure,” he revealed. A considerable contribution to these improvements has been made thanks to Berlin VoIP specialist snom’s new wideband telephone receiver klarVoice, in addition to their partnership with WAN-optimisation application and intelligent wideband management provider SmartShare Systems.

The PSD Bank Rhein-Ruhr sees bright prospects for the future not just because of the flexibility, comfort and the highest standards in voice quality of the telephony it can offer its employees and customers, but also because of the savings that can be made with VoIP towards a positive balance.