BUCHAREST, Romania, April 5, 2006 - Cisco Systems® today announced that Bancpost, one of the leading retail banks in Romania, has deployed a new Unified Communications system based on the Cisco® Unified CallManager platform. This implementation, one of the most extensive Internet Protocol (IP) communications projects in the Romanian financial and banking sector, was undertaken by Bancpost to increase its operational and sales effectiveness via a converged data and voice network that reduces operational costs, improves flexibility and enhances business agility.
"The new system offers communication services to all Bancpost employees, regardless of their location, on the basis of the IP data communications infrastructure, while eliminating the costs and shortcomings of the traditional private branch exchange (PBX) system", says Bogdan Ciucu, head of Telecommunications & Networks, IT Sector at Bancpost. "The call control solution is concentrated at Bancpost headquarters, thus eliminating the need for installing telephony hardware at the branch level, apart from the phones and the routers. This enables us to grow as needed and open branches in a much faster time."
In addition to operational enhancements, Bancpost is able to provide a higher level of sales effectiveness to customers by processing services such as personal loans in a much faster and more consistent manner across the bank's more than 160 branches countrywide. Moreover, by means of a commercial agreement with the Romanian Post, the bank provides financial services access to a large number of clients through a network of more than 2,650 post offices.
By implementing the Cisco Unified Communications system, Bancpost now benefits from low-cost long-distance calls, and realizes important savings by using the existing data communication infrastructure based on IP. The system is designed for more than 2,500 IP telephony users located in over 160 branches and includes a cluster with multiple Cisco Unified CallManager platforms, Unified IP Phones, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) gateways deployed over a routing and switching infrastructure implemented with Cisco equipment.
"This combination of data and voice IP communications technologies represents a scalable, redundant and easy-to-implement solution, offering multiple advantages", says Bogdan Constantinescu, country manager, Cisco Systems Romania and Republic of Moldova. "The integrated solution helps ensure significant decreases in long-distance communications costs, simplifies the network architecture and allows a more efficient administration of the entire communications system, which includes IP data, voice and video."
The solution was implemented by Datanet Systems, Cisco Gold Certified Partner in Romania. Datanet Systems experts have a rich experience in IP communications infrastructure development projects, integrating the competitive advantages provided by the advanced technologies with the highest level of expertise coming from the large number of certifications within the implementing team.
"The IP telephony system we implemented for Bancpost is a complex architecture which combines centralized redundancy and security features with the need for countrywide coverage", said Gabriel Mu?at, Datanet Systems' general manager. "The implementation of the solution for Bancpost presented a challenge for us, but we were able to respond successfully thanks to the high level of professional skills of our experts."
The Cisco Unified Communications system deployed by Bancpost is designed to be easy to manage, highly scalable and flexible to adapt to future business requirements generated by ongoing improvements in the quality of financial services and customer satisfaction.
About Bancpost
Bancpost was established on July 1, 1991, as a universal, commercial and savings bank, as a result of reorganizing the communication business. It shortly developed an impressive territorial network and conquered an important position on the Romanian banking market, offering a wide range of products and services to both private and corporate clients. At present, the majority shareholder of Bancpost is Eurobank EFG, on of the largest companies listed at the Greek Stock Exchange in terms of market capitalization, member of the EFG Group in Geneva.
About Datanet Systems
Established in 1998, Datanet System offers a complete portfolio of professional products and services for data, voice, and video communication networks, including the planning, design, integration, and implementation of solutions, and services for optimizing these. Datanet is one of the largest suppliers of communication technologies for many organizations in the financial and banking field and telecom operators. Datanet is also one of the major partners of Cisco in Romania, awarded with the Cisco Gold Partner status since April 2004 and holding more then 35 Cisco professional certifications for its experts.
