IPScape in the Australian Banking Sector

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Table of Contents

Introduction
National Bank of Australia – NAB
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ)
WestPac
AMP Bank
Opportunities for IPScape in these Banks
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

IPScape is a private company that offer contact platform to companies with their customers. The firm was founded in 2005 in Australia and it has employed over 40 people across the world. The firms uses the new cloud technology to offer its services to customers these services include customer contact where the services can be customers according to client needs like minute-by-minute needs.

IPScape products are common solutions for call centre services. They help them to minimize issues of cost repression, incorporate enhanced problem of communication such as the social media, provide real time insight and faster access to the market.

In the age where customer have become more demanding in terms of their expectations and the need of service companies to aggressively adapt to competition, companies no longer rely on their intelligences alone. The concept of outsourcing is offering opportunities to offshore services to low-cost companies like in India.

National Bank of Australia – NAB

The National Australia Bank has earned the reputation of being among the biggest financial organization and banks in Australia. This status is rated based on the company capitalization and the number of clients it ahs. In the worlds, NAB is ranked number 17 biggest bank based on the same variable of market capitalization (Hoover, 2008, p. 43).

The bank now has its operations in over 10 foreign nations and serves about 8.3 million clients and bank customers. About 2.3 million of these clients are wealth management clients based on its 2008 annual report. Internationally, NAB runs over 1808 branches and service centres in different nations plus over 4,600 ATM.

NAB has realized that outsourcing is one of the best ways of generating sales and assisting the clients with technical support and customer support matters (Hoover, 2008, p. 45). While the company has money and time to invest in its own call centres, it has opted for streamlined strategy and chosen to outsource these services (Oxelheim & Ghauri, 2008, p. 222).

The NAB has offshore outsourcing strategy where it has given up some of its call centres services to international firms. One of them is the Virgin Mobile, a Canadian company. The company ensures that NAB customers are satisfied, offer services at a cheaper cost, and reduces other related expenses (Oxelheim & Ghauri, 2008, p. 222).

Another company to which NAB has outsourced to is beCongent in the United Kingdom. This company manages the customer contact activities of the bank based on mutual trust relationship. Customers like NAB are benefiting from specialist services and quality hence does not need to employ similar talent on its premises (Oxelheim & Ghauri, 2008, p. 222).

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ)

This bank is commonly referred to as ANZ and it is one of the biggest banks operating in Australia and it is currently ranked number four based on its market capitalization. Most of its operations are mainly in Australia where the bank provides commercial and retail banking services as the main services (Hull 2002, p. 5).

The bank is the largest in New Zealand and it is slowly expanding its operations in Asia to about 25 nations. In the year 2008, the bank was named the most suitable bank internationally by the Dow Jones sustainability index and this was the second time in a row that the company was clinching the title (Hull 2002, p. 5).

The bank offers a variety of financial services in its base nations of Australia and new Zealand where it has a customer base of over 4 million customers. These clients are served through over 900 branches and over 1500 ATMs. The bank is seeking to expand to the Asian-pacific area of Hawaii and Indonesia (Hull 2002, p. 5).

For services such as end to end management of the telemarketing service for customer finance cards in support of the operation of the company are sometimes outsourced. There are in-house call centres, sales volume and budgeting service supports in ANZ operations. The main skills include strong customer management, design solutions, predictive dialler management, and running of the telephony.

Reports about ANZ show that it has distinguished itself from competitors for providing greater quality services and branch expansion policy (To & Tri 2002, p. 342). Nonetheless, within this multi-channel delivery mix that has seen it win awards there is a strong and efficient call centre service.

The bank appreciates the sensitive issue of outsourcing or off-shoring call centres and it has set policies of retaining the call centre operations in Australia to serve the domestic markets (To & Tri 2002, p. 342).

One of the important firms is the Firstsource Solutions Limited and it the number one service provider to ANZ. In general the firm has in-house operations for its domestic and outsourced offshore call centres for international market.

WestPac

The bank was known Western Pacific then shortened to Westpac portmanteau and then registered as Westpac Banking Corporation. The bank is often initialized by WBC, ASX and NZX for easy identification and it is among the big four banking institutions in Australia and the second biggest in new Zealand offering a variety of financial services on international context (Merrett, 2002, p. 353).

Subsequent to its amalgamation with St. George in the year 2008, the bank attained a base of 10 million customers. Similarly its branches network increased tremendously to 1200 and more than 28800 ATMs to become the highest in Australia.

The bank is ranked the second largest provider of home lending and wealth platforms by financing under management (Merrett, 2002, p. 353). The bank is also placed position two in terms of its assets as well as the second largest lender to businesses. The company shared the title of the most valuable company in austral with ANZ.

Concerning its call centre services, the company has both in-house and off-shore outsourcing. The bank is very conscious with all factors of its call centre activities including in-house and outsources as well as the inbound and outbound. The company has always sought to understand how the activities are integrated and the ways that it can use to optimize the services (Westpac. 2009, para. 4).

The company also constantly evaluated the impact of a number of models and benchmarks the performance in relation to cost. The firm maintains in-house services for clear track of its services in the domestic market of Australia while employing off-shore outsourcing for international services.

Westpac has opted to outsource some call centres because they provide superior services because of specialization compared to in-house call centres (Kevin & Allan, 2005, p. 231). Furthermore the offshore outsourced call centres could be more efficient due to the use of economies of scale.

AMP Bank

This bank is well described as a banking institution which is also a very prolific wealth management firm headquartered in Sydney Australia. Since its inception in the year 1849, the company has maintained a steady increase of customer base and currently it serves about four million customers (Fung et al 2002, p. 399). The company provides banking services for individuals and conducts other businesses.

For individual clients, services the types of services involved include home loans and savings account. The financial planners at the bank offer advice to clients concerning issues like operating savings accounts, expanding businesses and even starting new ones (Fung et al 2002, p. 399).

The company has two business units, the first unit; Financial AMP banking offers services that concern financial products like planning, income protection, retirement savings and pension among others. The AMP Capital investors section offers services that regard investments like asset management, domestic and international shares and structured equity among others.

The AMP bank has a mixed strategy of call centre services where it employs in-house and offshore services to its clients (Fung et al 2002, p. 399). This outsourcing strategy is uniquely used with regard to the fact that call centre services are very important to the company as they help in profit generation in a significant manner.

Their services are very important for the management and sustainably of the company’s brand value and a way to leverage customer satisfaction.

Opportunities for IPScape in these Banks

For several decades now, banks used to regard their call centres as extra cost and all these time, the most important thing was to get the client off the phone very fast. However, times have changed very fast and now the banks in Australia as well as elsewhere in the world are struggling to make the call centres their profit making centres. There are a number of factors that have propelled this change (Li et al, 1998, p. 102).

The first is that banks are realizing that revenues are constantly going down in their branches and elsewhere. Second, there is faster development of technology and this allows banks to engage in operations previously unavailable, banks can up-sell and cross sell because of the new technology (Li et al, 1998, p. 102).

Third, clients are increasingly becoming difficult to access via conventional marketing and this has forced banks to become more aggressive and take advantage of the clients who call in for assistance. Lastly the value of clients’ service at the call centres is turning out to be a very competitive tool for rivalry among various companies.

The IPScape solution has a broad market with regard to the emerging needs of these banks. The most obvious target has been identified as being the contact centre and the firm has over the recent times focused on this section (Ipscape 2011, para. 2).

It is optimistic to consider call centres as pertinent client touch points and areas of increasing customer service and zeal to sell. However, banks will be taking caution to avoid becoming to channel focused and developing individual objectives that may be cross-purposes from tough multi-channels (Li et al, 1998, p. 107).

There are a number of banks that have been seen to grow and expand gradually and steadily because of good call centre services and they manner I which they treat their clients (Murdoch, 2009, para. 3). Relying on branches alone cannot sustain a bank in the current economic environment.

The call centre services provided by IPScape will act as substitutes for branch banks and as many banks continue outsourcing, IPScape will benefit by having more clients.

The type of technology that IPScape has, it will be able to offer real time decision making service to NAB, ANZ, Westpac, and AMP therefore allowing them to up-sell and cross-sell when clients make calls to the centres (Ipscape 2011, para. 2).

Banks also need telecommunication services but many providers have been reluctant to venture into these fields because the competitors are busy developing new software for better services. The IPScale cloud technology is based on agile, client service intelligence and customer preference (Miller 2008, p. 78). Simply put, the company provides services that the old fashioned competitors cannot offer.

This means their services have greater flexibility; they have faster speed, real-time feedback, immediate scalability and seamless switching from short messages, social media like twitter and email. As IPScape proactively seeks innovative telecommunication and integration of systems in Australia it will be possible to offer quality services to these four banks.

Based on the fact that the company has been proven to work in the United Kingdom in terms of telecommunication services, based on this model and the contacts or the greater region of Asia pacific region (Ipscape 2011, para. 2), IPScape will be a great force in telecommunication business.

There are new technologies being developed under the cloud technology to find new applications. These new applications are able to help the service provider to walk on the floor or tenuously manage customers, view the queue, monitor the calls coming in and train agents (Miller 2008, p. 78).

This software will be very beneficial for specialized services to the banks. With other outbound marketing efforts such as mail and telephone turning out to be less effective, banks are opting for inbound customers’ calls as better strategy in marketing.

IPScape is a very big company in Australia and it is a great innovator and it spearheads new advancements that are beneficial to the new customer needs. These new advancement will be able to satisfy the global expansion of services and a chance of leveraging experience.

Conclusion

Organisations that seek to outsource their serviced are curious to understand the pros and cost of off-shoring and in-house services so as to make their decisions. In the services of call centre, outsourcing has become cheaper and more efficient because the firms like IPScape solutions specialize in these services and therefore they also benefit from economies of scale and the benefits trickle down to the clients.

The banks therefore access services at a cheaper cost. The use of modern cloud-based technology is a great service that IPScape offers and the four banks mentioned here will benefit from these services as they enjoy contact platform.

Reference List

Fung, J.G., et al. (2002). A Decade Of Internationalization: The Experience Of An Australian Retail Bank, Journal Of International Financial Markets, Institutions And Money, Vol. 12, Issue 4-5, Pp. 399-417.

Hoover, G. 2008. Hoover’s Handbook of World Business, Austin, TX: Reference Press.

Hull, L. 2002. Foreign-Owned Banks: Implications For New Zealand’s Financial Stability. Reserve Bank Of New Zealand Discussion Paper No. DP2002/05.

Ipscape, 2011. Simple, Clever And Fast Customer Contact Technology, Web.

Kevin, H. & Allan, O. 2005. Report Title: Westpac GEM Australia: A Study Of Australian Entrepreneurship In 2004, Swinburne University Of Technology Issue 2005 Series/Report No. 3: Australian Graduate School Of Entrepreneurship Research Series, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 231.

Li, D., et al. 1998.Uncertainty Reasoning Based On Cloud Models In Controllers, Computer & Mathematics With Application, Vol. 35, Issue 3, Pp. 99-123.

Merrett, D.T. 2002. The Internationalization of Australian Banks, Journal Of International Financial Markets, Institutions And Money, Vol. 12, Issues 4/5, Pp. 357-377.

Miller, M. 2008. Cloud Computing: Web-Based Applications That Change The Way You Work And Collaborate Online, new York: Que Publishing Company.

Murdoch, S. 2009. “Big Four Australian Banks Have Joined The Global Elite”. News Limited. The Australian Web.

Oxelheim, L & Ghauri, P.N. 2008. European Union and The Race For Foreign Direct Investment In Europe, New York: Emerald Group Publishing, pp. 222.

To, H.M & Tri, D. 2002. Factors Influencing The Performance Of Foreign-Oened Banks In New Zealand, Journal Of International Financial Markets, Institutions And Money, Vol. 12, Issues 4/5, Pp. 341-357.

Westpac, 2009. “The Westpac Group Full Year 2010 Results”. Retrieved from https://www.westpac.com.au/docs/pdf/aw/ic/2010_FY10_ASX_Doc_V21.pdf

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