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Developing and using
technology for its own sake has long
been a temptation for many in the IT
industry. However, the chance to use
existing technology in a new way can be
just as exciting. ADCC IT team was
developing solution for fleet location
in early 2001, ADCC was using a German
made hardware for location tracking
(GPS/GSM) ,it was working on two way
protocol and SMS was used for exchange
of data between the hardware and the
control station software at that time
Mr. Arun Lakhani (CMD ADCC) tapped the
potential in SMS based other value added
services and the idea was conceived and
it gave birth to IRBS (Integrated remote
banking solution).
Mr. Sanjay Deshmukh
(Director, ADCC) says “if we can add
value to existing banking service by
implementing IRBS then project had wide
support within the bank.”
ADCC Development team
says development of the SMS-based and
IVR based IRBS (Integrated remote
banking solution) was a "challenging and
fun thing to do", and the time was right
for such a project.
The Idea of IRBS was
shared and discussed with Mr.
Chaudhary(CEO, Cooperative Bank), he was
excited with the idea of providing
banking services of 24X7.
IRBS is a value added
service to bank customers. It enables
bank to automate its routine working.
The bank can interact with its customer
through this system. Customers need not
come to the bank for their routine
inquiries; rather they can access this
information directly through the IRBS.
This reduces the bank’s traffic thereby
increasing working efficiency. On the
other hand, customers get the
convenience of accessing the bank
directly from their home or workplace.
IRBS adds real value by its event based
alerts. Customer is informed about all
the transactions happening in his
account. It can include range of
services like information about bank
accounts, Time deposits, ATM card
transactions, Credit card transactions,
Fund transfer, Personal loan details,
Mutual Funds etc.
IRBS system has two
modules wireless banking (SMS Banking)
and tele-banking (Interactive voice
response). This system has PUSH-PULL and
alert features using delivery channels
like Telephone/SMS/FAX/email.
The client of bank
has to register with the service and
have to opt for the information using
the required channel.
Phone banking was in
existence since long time but this
service was mostly provided by big
players in this arena at the same they
were charging high premium for this type
of service. “Providing premium service
on lowers rates” is our prime thirst
says –Mr. Chaudhary (CEO, Cooperative
Bank).
“IRBS has wide
chances to lead this segment due to
features offered” says Satyajeet Raut
(Group Head Products)
Mr. Arun Lakhani (CMD
, ADCC) calls the IRBS project “classic
technology example of vender and client
partnership”
“Designing IRBS was
great challenge as we were expected to
transform an Idea to reality” says
Sandeep Thakre (Lead Consultant).
No Major difficulties
were encountered, but team spends some
time working on development of SMS
Server and IVR server. Some of the time
the hardware or protocol setting was
needed. Main aim was to reduce the
troubleshooting time in case the system
goes live.
“Testing was really a
fun” say Sachin Bang (QA-Lead
consultant). Almost all the employees of
ADCC had received hundreds of SMS and
telephone call when mass testing was
going on. Everybody contributed more
than hundred percent in the development.
"Some of the people
who worked at ADCC had some business
capability in the areas we were working
on and had some ideas, particularly on
streamlining processes," explains Mr.
Sanjay Deshmukh. "It was after ADCC came
to us with its wireless application
ideas - and we saw some great ideas -
that we worked together to build IRBS."
Mr. Chaudhary(CEO, Cooperative Bank).
Development work started on IRBS in MID
2001 and it was made live in early 2002.
Earlier alerts were
not part of the system, during the
development and discussion with domain
experts, it was decided to go with
alerts for some important services and
this decision paid off as most of the
customer subscribed alert based service.
IRBS was deployed for
sample testing in January 2002. The
system was then tested by some pool of
customers. After successful testing it
was launched in March 2002. This service
was offered for free as an introductory
offer and received good response.
One of the customer
“Earlier I used to keep track of balance
in my mind and it was difficult to keep
, but now it is more easy , I just type
Bal keyword on my mobile set and I get
the response SMS in less than a minute”
Initially when
service was started ADCC and bank was
expecting lots of PULL messages from the
user, but this proved wrong. They were
more than happy if pushing was done from
banking end for balance or some other
service but on their own only few of
them use to pull the banking service. So
in the latter version most of the
services were schedule based PUSH
services, for example everybody who had
subscribed the service were receiving
Balance on their mobile set in the
morning or were receiving transaction
based SMS.
On cricket match day
there was lots and lots of traffic when
India won cricket match against
Pakistan. Because of this huge traffic
with the operator customer did not
received the SMS on the time.
Mr. Arun Lakhani
points out that, from a business
management viewpoint, innovations like
IRBS, have high value in maintaining
client relationships.
The team firmly
believes they have created a good base
and can continue to build on that as
technology improves.
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