A datacentre consolidation and an update of its call centre
technology are among the main IT projects under way at Abbey ahead
of the Santander takeover.
The bank is hiring contractors from India to help it plug skills
gaps in its IT department and provide support for new IT
projects.
Gary Barnett, IT research director at analyst firm Ovum, said Abbey
had a good track record in IT investment. The bank had fewer legacy
systems than some of the larger high street banks, such as Barclays
and HSBC, which will make it easier to integrate with the IT
systems of another bank following any merger, he said.
Datacentre shake-up
Abbey plans to reduce the number of its datacentres from nine to
two by the end of 2005.
Over the past two years, Abbey has shut down four datacentres in an
effort to consolidate its Intel-based hardware using Unisys ES7000
servers and blade servers, which take up less space in the
datacentre.
The consolidation will allow Abbey to reduce by 35% the number of
Intel-based servers it operates. The consolidation has also been
driven by non-technical requirements, including a desire to reduce
the property portfolio.
Virtual call centre
Abbey is also developing a virtual call centre running over its IP
network in a bid to improve its customer service.
Abbey has deployed an IP- based network to support banking
services, customer relationship management and IP tele- phony as
part of the bank's £125m refresh of its branch networks. The IP
network was completed in October 2003. Abbey is now rolling out
applications, one of which is a virtual call centre, which will
enhance business continuity provision and improve the flexibility
of its customer service.
Abbey aims to standardise its call centre technology to allow its
agents to work from any location. The project, due to be completed
by the end of 2005, will also support the new business structure of
the bank.
"The holy grail is to enable any agent in any location to support
the customer," Bill Gibbons, director of technology services and
support at Abbey, told Computer Weekly earlier this year.
"As part of this you can enhance business continuity and disaster
recovery because you can spread all your calls and ensure there is
no single physical point of failure."
Savings from the call centre overhaul are likely to be £10m or
more, in line with those achieved with other large IT
projects.
Other benefits of the new call centre infrastructure include a
simplification of IT, which will improve service levels; easier
integration between applications; and being able to respond more
quickly to the demands of the business.
The new call centre system will be run as a managed service and use
a virtual private network from BT Transform, which was installed in
just five months last year.
The internal telephone network is also being replaced by IP
telephony running between branches over the VPN.
Offshore contractors
Abbey has been increasing the number of Indian IT contractors it
employs.
Only a few hundred have been used so far, although Abbey has the
option of increasing this to cope with spikes in demand for IT
development work. Indian staff can be employed both offshore and in
the UK.
In 2002, the bank signed an outsourcing deal with Infotech, under
which staff at its software development centre in Bangalore would
help the bank deliver large-scale IT projects.