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 Financial services has traditionally been a pillar of the Irish economy. But the challenges of late 2008 and the full-year outlook for 2009 lead most pundits to predict this sector will remain in some turmoil.

Currently the global financial services industry is undergoing a major transformation that takes account of changed realities.

Long established business models are being adjusted to exploit advances in information and communications technology (ICT), lower costs, improve the assessment of risk and address the increasing regulation of the sector.

These international trends will inevitably filter down to the Irish market. The banking environment here was until recently characterised by growing competition as new entrants came on stream.

But with a more constricted marketplace, the new focus is on retaining existing clients, providing them with an expanded range of services, and meeting the growing demand for multi-channel banking systems as customers become more sophisticated. Additionally, to satisfy internal and external pressures, financial services organisations face an increasing burden of regulatory compliance and risk management.

To continue being successful, we believe that financial services firms must:

1. Reduce costs and streamline operations to boost competitiveness. A move to managed services for non-core operations is one way to achieve this.
2. Improve customer retention and customer acquisition to stave off the threat from challenger banks.
3. Manage the regulatory compliance and risk management process as effectively and efficiently as possible.
4. Further refine multi-channel operations to make them as customer-centric and cost effective as possible.

How eircom can help

• Cost management: our IP-based platform means all traffic types can run over one network, which reduces network management costs. By using your IP data network to transmit your voice traffic you will benefit from free internal site-to-site calls and greatly reduced charges for external calls. What's more, IP provides much greater flexibility, giving you the option of reducing costs further and increasing compliance by outsourcing costly and time-consuming network and systems management functions.
   
  The power of IP-based networks can also efficiently run in-office services, from security and access control systems to air conditioning. In eircom we're working closely with many organisations today to rationalise and consolidate servers using technology such as VMware to drive up efficiency, further pushing down ICT costs.

• Customer acquisition & retention: holding on to customers and recruiting new ones is the lifeblood of any business. At eircom, we offer a range of solutions and consultancy services for customer retention, many of which have stemmed directly from our own experience of running a global, award-winning contact centre. We also offer solutions that will help your organisation target, recruit and retain customers by focusing on discrete groups of users, from tech-savvy younger people who have a digital lifestyle, to the 'mortgage slaves' who no longer work a traditional nine to five, and the 'New Irish' for whom English may not be their first language. For example, one of our customers is using a Polish-language Interactive Voice Response system supplied by eircom to engage with that large community.

• Compliance & risk management: the increasingly demanding regulatory environment places unique pressures on your business and imposes significant costs. eircom can help with business continuity planning, which together with the provision of hosting and managed services will ensure that your organisation never has to close its doors. We understand the impact of the regulatory environment such as the costs associated with the ongoing training that's required to keep your staff up-to-speed on the latest developments. eircom can help. For example, our secure, reliable IP network is being used by a number of organisations locally to run IP-TV-based training programmes on their internal network. Other solutions include applications that record and monitor business transactions, state-of-the-art network management services and high performance computer security systems. In short, if you have questions about how to make your business secure and legally compliant, eircom enterprise has the answers.

• Multi-channel contact centres: if you're looking to deploy or upgrade a multi-channel contact system, look no further than eircom. Many organisations today are using call centre solutions that were implemented as Y2K projects. Their focus tends to be voice calls and they offer poor integration with other operational systems used in the organisation. We offer advisory services and consultancy that will assist, select and implement a solution that is best suited to your business. It will facilitate the multi-channel world, including web, e-mail, SMS messaging and newer technologies such as co-browsing, social networks and instant messaging.