|
Rapidly integrating legacy environments with new e-business applications
In most high-production financial areas, business-critical applications run on robust, ultra-reliable host systems that have grown with the business over the years to accommodate transaction growth. Retiring the dozens of years of coding and thoughtful planning that have gone into these systems is costly. Equally costly are the highly trained people that would be needed to reconfigure the host systems and migrate years of content to simpler, more modern and intuitive interfaces.
Very few vendors' software products can ensure a simple and fast route for legacy-to-Web migration. Host presentation and integration software solutions must be designed to provide productivity increases and highly customizable interfaces. Moreover, solutions must enable fast and easy extraction of key customer information directly from databases and legacy applications.
NetManage has been a world leader for many years and has developed customized, modular and high-performance solutions that deliver intuitive and innovative features, particularly for the banking industry, which faces the daily challenge of managing high-volume support and assistance requests.
CartaSi selected NetManage host presentation and integration solutions to enable a very simple, fast legacy-to-Web migration, so CartaSi could reliably and quickly respond to its over 30,000 customers who generate requests and inquiries through its contact centers.
CartaSi customer service is on target with NetManage solutions
NetManage delivered the right solution in a very short time and substantiated previously benchmarked results. The reliability and performance of the NetManage solution represents an "undisputed truth" for CartaSi. "Implementing a CRM-based help desk can be a very complex operation," continues Bellati. "With OnWeb, we were able to achieve the service levels we were aiming for, which enabled us to manage a very substantial number of calls in compliance with the timeframes expected by our customers."
Extraordinary speed of implementation
"How long will it take to transform our host information into Web-based solutions?" This was the first question CartaSi managers asked NetManage. The response? With OnWeb you only need only one day to activate a Web environment and convert host applications. One week to develop customizations and refine the graphical user interface. One month to build the new Web-based e-business applications.
The CartaSi help desk was implemented with extraordinary speed. In June 2001, after only ten days of work and an in-depth analysis of CartaSi's needs and requirements, NetManage consultants released a pilot version of the project. The production phase began in October 2001 and final implementations were completed in the Milan and Rome Contact Centers.
With two very successful implementations and real-world results already achieved, CartaSi made the decision to deploy its final stage and activate the third Contact Center in Rome. All three sites together comprise CartaSi's help desk services with 250 operators managing 18-20 thousand calls daily.
A versatile, reliable Web solution built to work with the existing host system
"CartaSi boasts over 7 ½ million cardholders and is the unchallenged leader in Italy. CartaSi contact center call volume increases daily. Customers call about charges they've made, verify their available credit lines, and ask for credit increases. Customer emergency calls must get immediate attention and be handled reassuringly.
CartaSi set up its service centers to streamline these customer services. CartaSi leverages information stored its host (mainframe) system and needs to quickly and easily retrieve critical data to handle customer calls. The incoming calls are diverted to an IVR (interactive voice response) system and relevant data is immediately retrieved real time from the host database about the individual caller. All the information given by the caller and extracted from host database is then transferred directly to the help center agent's screen in a matter of seconds and the agent has everything onscreen to help the customer.
The NetManage solution also delivers Web-based customer service capabilities, enabling help desk staff to respond to e-mail messages. Three toll-free numbers and phone-to-Web multi-channel access are also available to CartaSi cardholders, who can now get help from help desk staff using these new simple and easy-to-use tools.
Fast track to increased productivity and expansion
"Before deployment of this project, CartaSi based its activities on a host system used to collect and process data, and a completely separate call management system which had no links to the legacy system," explains CartaSi's Luca Bellati. "Transforming contents into easy-to-use formats through user-friendly HTML-based views instead of traditional green screens of still-available emulators, with real-time data updating capabilities using traditional tools would have required tremendous economic resources. With NetManage OnWeb, two operators were capable of performing all necessary procedures after a brief period of training and working side-by-side with NetManage experts."
The benefits and success CartaSi has achieved in just the first few months after implementing the NetManage solution is enabling it to drive even more expansion of its services portfolio to all of its subscribing banking institutions and to the world of co-branded credit cards.
Last March, CartaSi agreed to collaborate with Esselunga and Visa to create a new product, CartaSi Fìdaty Oro Plus, which is targeted at customers of the well-known supermarket chain and brings together the benefits of a customer loyalty card and a trusted popular credit card.
CartaSi is moving more in this direction in the near future by extending similarly structured services to all its affiliated banks. Its first service offering is the CartaSi help desk, which because of the built-in flexibility delivered by the NetManage host platform, proves itself daily as a strategic and reliable tool to service end customers effectively and rapidly.
CartaSi was founded in 1985 as Servizi Interbancari
by Italy's 16 major banks. The CartaSi credit card was first
issued in 1986, when Italian credit cards were a sign of
personal prestige and exclusivity. It quickly became very
successful and today is popular for travel, general use and
online purchases in Italy and throughout the world. CartaSi
has a sales volume in excess of 16.2 billion Euros.
As
a result of its NetManage OnWeb solution, CartaSi is:
- Unified host system used to collect
and process data with the customer call management system
- Transformed host contents into user-friendly HTML views
instead of traditional green screens
- Enabled phone-to-Web multi-channel access for CartaSi
cardholders and Web-based customer service capabilities
so help desk staff can respond to e-mail
messages
| 
