Mexico City, December 5, 2013.- Gentera, the leading Mexican microfinance group, with over 2.8 million clients and more than 18,000 employees in Latin America, has chosen Cisco® Enterprise Networks and Collaboration Solutions to be deployed in its new corporate offices in Mexico City, its Customer Care Contact Center, and its subsidiaries network.

Gentera selected Cisco Routing, Switches, Access Points, IP Telephony, Customer Collaboration (Contact Center) and social monitoring solutions (Cisco SocialMiner®), as well as WLS and Network Administration, to be used by over 3,000 employees in more than 500 branches in México and through its various subsidiaries in Latin America. These include Compartamos Banco (Mexico), the microinsurance broker Aterna, the nonbanking correspondents network manager Yastás, Compartamos Financiera (Peru), and Compartamos S.A. (Guatemala).

This Next Generation Architecture will enable Gentera to offer first-class services to customers and employees, through a unique platform that consolidates data, voice and video using advanced security standards and regulations.

The full deployment of this infrastructure is the cornerstone for next-generation financial services and will help Gentera to consolidate its leadership in providing financial inclusion throughout the region for the base of the pyramid in Latin America by generating social, economic and human value for people.

Gentera is a group of companies oriented to eradicate financial exclusion in Latin America by offering savings, credits and insurance products. Their new corporate offices are located at Insurgentes Sur 1458 Colonia Actipan in Mexico City. Gentera, through its companies, has presence in all Mexican states and some Central and South American countries. They also have a contact center in Mexico City, with over 300 agents, that provides 24/7 customer service.

Federico Hernandez, vice-president of IT and operations of Gentera, said: “We decided to deploy Cisco technology because Cisco and its partners understood from the very beginning our business processes and were able to meet the requirements that we have when offering financial services to support both our internal and our external customers, thus becoming a consultant technology partner more than only a supplier”.

Rogelio Velasco, vice president of Cisco México, said: “We are delighted to be infrastructure partners with Gentera, offering our world-class solutions that will help them to face actual and new business challenges. The network implemented has been deployed to support new trends such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and other business operations processes, like the collaboration infrastructure for their new corporate building and the new Customer Service Contact Center infrastructure. Their network and solutions will help them to collaborate internally and assist their customers from anyplace and using any device.”

The Cisco solutions implemented in Gentera are:

Cisco Collaboration Solutions:

Cisco Unified Communications (Voice, Data and Video over IP): This Collaboration platform will transform critical business processes within the bank, converging different communication channels (voice, data and video) and enabling new and productive ways of collaboration, not just between the bank employees, but also with business partners and customers, embracing more productivity, operational efficiency and innovation in creating new products and services for the market.

Cisco Unified Contact Center: Next Generation Contact Center that leverages the power of OmniChannel capabilities, will enable new and better ways to communicate with customers, address their needs, and create a new customer collaborative experience, in order to attract new customers through a better user experience, and retain and increase wallet share from existing customers.

Cisco SocialMiner: Harness the power of social networks data to understand customer and employees’ behavior and better serve their needs.

Cisco VideoConference and TelePresence® solutions: World Class conferencing leveraging the power of video for best collaboration between various offices and subsidiaries and the possibility to enable Next Generation Banking services through the use of video in all devices.

Cisco WebEx®: Allows a dramatic increase in productivity through cost-effective web-based conferencing technology to better reach customers, employees and partners. Enables this web conferencing capability on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and different operating systems, changing the workspace experience of the bank by addressing mobility, providing collaboration tools, and increasing speed of business decision making no matter where the user is working, on which device, and on which operating system.

Enterprise Networks (Cat 4k, Cat 6k, ISE,Cat 3750-X, ISR)

Cisco Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 4500 and Catalyst 3750-X: Together, these families provide a very robust Core, Distribution and Access platform with high performance, high availability and features that lower the network’s cost of operation, such as Smart Operations and EnergyWise™. Additionally they support advanced features like VSS and IP SLA to monitor and troubleshoot the performance of rich media applications like voice and video in real time. The integration of these platforms with the Cisco Identity Services Engine (Cisco ISE) enables the network to support consistent access security policies.

Cisco Identity Services Engine (Cisco ISE): Leverages the context information that the network elements provide to allow the creation of consistent access security policies across the wired and wireless networks. These policies take into account the identity of the person accessing the network, the kind of device used, the type of network (wired or wireless), and the time of day to apply the right access policy to this user.

Cisco ISR 2900 and ISR 3900: These multiservice routing platforms provide WAN connectivity and voice services with great performance and future-proof functionality via hardware modularity and software upgradability.

Cisco Wireless: With industry-leading Radio Resource Management (RRM) capabilities and full support of Cisco Unified Access architecture, it provides a WLAN network with high RF availability and best-of-breed security features. The integration of this platform with the Cisco Identity Services Engine allows the network to support consistent, network-wide security policies based on context information. 

The deployment of the infrastructure was the responsibility of Cisco Gold Partners Getronics and Micronet. Micronet was in charge of the implementation of IP phones, video devices, and hardware communications required, as well as the Help Desk, Customer Credit, and ACD reception for the Contact Center. Getronics implemented the LAN, Wireless and WAN infrastructure. Both partners will provide their support to maintain the continuity of the services.

Supporting Resources

• According to Dell’Oro’s recent worldwide WLAN report, Cisco gained in WLAN market share this quarter. For additional information, visit this article:
  http://www.fiercemobileit.com/press-releases/wireless-lan-market-posts-ten-percent-revenue-growth-third-quarter-2013-acc
• Cisco Mobility Blog: http://blogs.cisco.com/tag/mobility/
• Cisco Mobility Twitter:https://twitter.com/Cisco_Mobility

About Gentera

Gentera is a registered brand of Compartamos S.A.B de C.V. Compartamos is a holding company whose primary objective is to promote, organize and manage companies, domestic and international, that are subject to its investment policies. Compartamos was established in 2010 and headquartered in Mexico, and its shares began trading on the Mexican Stock Exchange on December 24, 2010, under the ticker symbol “COMPARC*”.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com.

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