Why Can’t Banks Treat UCaaS Migration Like Any Other Industry?

Hello and welcome to UC Today. My name is Christopher Carey and today I'm joined by Rahul Sawardekar, global product head for UCaaS Solutions at Tata Communications. We're going to be discussing why banks need a more careful assessment approach to modernizing their business critical voice and communications environments. So Rahul, thank you for joining me today. Um, diving right into it. I mean, banks have complex business critical communication estates. What makes modernization harder in financial services than in a typical enterprise? Hey, thanks Chris and thank you for having me here and uh it's a very interesting question and uh it's a very interesting juncture also because we are interacting with a lot of banks and we see this day in day out right so I I believe modernization of banks or you see infrastructure modernization of banks is slightly more complicated from than a typical modernization project right because you have to understand a bank has an massive operational uh operation workload right plus they are operating in multiple geographies they are operating for different use cases from a trading desk use case to customer support use case to let's say some important locations VIP customer use cases so you you got to understand that banks are uh banks are an orchestration uh mega orchestration kind of situation so typically if you look at a bank and you go back and peel it A bank will have a complex voice estate map, right? And there you start seeing all the things that the bank does, right? Uh and while technology wise it sounds simple like migration, right? It's it's modernization. It's very simple in technology terms. But [snorts] when you start looking at this voice estate map and start looking at modernization of not just the elements but the use cases and the processes and what's the next 7 years 10 years outlook that you want to be that's where the assessment becomes the most critical piece that we see and that's where the conversations get really interesting and they get really deep And I mean when a bank begins planning a UCaaS or a cloud voice uh transition. What are the most important dependencies it needs to uncover across uh legacy uh PBX carriers uh contact centers or collaboration tools. Yes, you you rightfully said this right you you listed some of this right. uh as I said when you start building a transformation road map you would look at the number of PBXs a bank will have none of most of the banks have not one they have few once every business has then you will have number of endpoints the endpoints are physical endpoints or they could be hardware endpoints uh some of the emergency systems that they have deployed they got to look at the use cases for every type of scenario there will be geographical constraints right then you come in the complex ones compliance right data sovereignty right is my call flow even leaving the country so you you got to go and look at that then then you look at risk then resiliency plans right you're working if you're a large bank in US right just imagine an outage on a toll-free line right you need to build redundancies how do you build around that how do you ensure your operations is uh not hampered so you got to go and look at all these You got to look at multiple. It's not about just PBX modernization. It's not about moving SBCs to cloud. It's not about carrier consolidation. All this if thought through a proper assessment will give you very successful project outcome. Right? You can do piecemeal you'll start by it but you will not be future ready right like a simple thing everybody's moving into world of AI. Does your architecture or voice map allow you to bring your own AI or are you pigeonholed to use some some limited systems? Right? You want the flexibility. You could there could be great solutions for tomorrow and they will come but you need to have these flexibilities to bring in some of these components as they get developed and that's what makes assessment or road map planning and target state very important. Yeah, I think you said it there with uh future proof. So why is a detailed voice estate assessment so important before deciding what to migrate, retain or modernize? Yes. So I think I think everybody here is looking at AI, right? Banks are looking at AI in multiple fronts, right? A lot of these workloads, a lot of these conversations are going to be AIdriven in the future. If they are not today, they'll probably be 10% tomorrow and 50% 3 years down the line, right? So future proofing for AI adoption is very important. Now what's happening in the industry right now is the AI is at the end of the day let's say AI agent is as good as the last mile that you deliver that agent on right I mean uh while the the tokens cost versus the cost of termination cost if you compare they are uh the tokens might be a little more expensive also right but at the end of the day what's important is the customer's experiences at the end of that call right is going to be based on how the agent eventually performs in a real life environment. Is there is he able to scale? Is he looking at latencies properly? Uh I mean latency uh gives an impact on user experience of that agent. Right? So these all elements are going to were not so important in thinking of future. In the past people were okay with latencies, right? I mean nobody really they obviously everybody looked at it when they're looking at a trading desk or some sort of environment but they were generally okay with latency now everybody's looking at a better latency figure how do you improve that because AI models will work differently and will work better so future proofing involves all this right it doesn't mean that you have the solution or you have that adopted features adopted capabilities but you got to think about where the direction might head and that's where a little bit of assessment of what you are and what you want to be is important, right? Uh you might not necessarily uh you might be doing everything right for what is there today. So that's just modernization, right? But you might not be considering the elements for the future. So this is where uh I think a conversations more consulting conversations that we see customers are liking to have with us, right? What's your experience? How have you done this? How have the other guys solved for this? And this is where I think the direction is going right now. The output is eventual modernization, migration plans and all that. But I think the the the most important piece right now is the assessment and even how do we migrate right moving from state A to state B should not impact operations should be parallely done with minimal impact. That's also critical because banks don't shut stock. they they are 24 by7 right now. So we we we there has to be minimal migration impact. So that's all take taken care in a very thoughtful assessment. And how should banks decide which services can move first and which need to remain in a a hybrid or a coexistence model for longer? Uh a high I eventually every element is going to be evaluated on whether it it has the capability or a comparable capability in cloud but I think there are multiple uh condition factors that every capability goes through right there's one that's primarily one in regulation right some of the regulations dictate local presence they dictate on onsite on prem some of the capabilities require you to put a server adjacent to uh the main platform. So there is obviously that regulatory and capability evaluation that is there right there are there are there are I mean I would say most banks there are a few choices on PBX providers right so there is obviously there is a cloud-based most of the cloud-based PBX providers are there then there is a feature feature deep dive [snorts] this is where the conversations get interesting right I mean there is a certain way banks have been doing certain things over the years they used they have an operational muscle of doing it in a certain way. Uh can that be disrupted or can that be modernized also? Right? Can does the bank need to go and assign let's say users themselves or can that be modernized by an automation APIs right? Can you know telecom resources be assigned to the user by API so there is there is modernization happening there and that that's when the restrictions and uh the process definitions at the banks come in play. This is where we see uh there's an interesting case that we we were looking at one of uh with few banks actually they're saying that there are VIP lines right there are lines that are very important for us uh we have bought them locally they don't necessarily but they have been running for the numbers have been running for a decade plus and they know the VIP customers know or HNI know then when they call these numbers they'll get some support there for a few is a certain part of the VIP lines were shut. These are not contact centers, right? Nobody's like actively monitoring. They're just bunch of VIP line. But when it calls and HNI is calling, they were down for a few days and uh they don't know what how many customers would have called them. But after a few days, the senior partner gets a call that hey guy your guy shut. So guess what you got to even these peripherals which are low volume neglected ones also could be uh you know a uh an area that you got to consider and now we go into monitoring and proactively calling every day daily checks you know that is the whole modernization space And I mean how can banks reduce security fraud and third party risk while bringing cloud platforms voice services and multiple providers into the environment. Yeah, I think security fraud uh is I think the cornerstone of every bank's evaluation. It starts probably with some of these, right? So, uh I I think but there are of as we orchestrate the solution or build these maps, right? Every every entry point into the estate is kind of evaluated, right? I think on the voice front there as as I said, right? uh identity becomes the most important uh bit right uh what's interesting is we at Tata actually sometimes think that are we in the minutes business or we in the identity business because guess what numbers are identity right now uh the number that flashes in front of you is is uh is is what is trusted so there are uh there are various things that banks can do to ensure the identity is protected both on inbound and outbound there various fraud detection methods that are there uh that we implement with uh with banks to prevent them on this exposure. Uh that that could be let's say um passport or some sort of tokens with the call. There could be tips of numbers, there could be thresholding, multiple things that we can we do with the customer. That is when we realize that as as banks will move towards a more uh more a agentic world and the world also move advances banks have to ensure that there is any channel that they're using to reach their customers internally or externally has to have a strong validation uh validation process. A simple example would be you could with voice cloning being so uh so easily accessible. You could call a bank and pretend to be an HNI. I mean at the end of the day, how do you detect a synthetic voice versus a real voice, right? So there the banks are going to go into this modernization space with uh with a synthetic voice detection prefilter, right? Then it goes into an agent. then the agent can be trusted or the agent will trust just seeing your name you know with the in the world of AI is complicated it's not so easy Yeah I think you said it there complicated definitely with the uh voice cloning uh technology it's got so advanced um so but beyond uh uh UCaaS platform what should uh a financial services organization look for in a communications partner to manage a complex transition with competence Uh so uh apart from the UCaaS platform the platform is one element of it. You got to look at all the as I said we said compliance country specific regulation the availability of telecom services in those country data sovereignty risks migration plans uh then look at you know fax eaxes also banks a dying tech but for a bank it's still important right so you got to look at all these elements stack your capabilities and then uh start looking at how do you map it in this all this in your voice estate, right? You got to look at uh specific user groups in the organization that might have special needs. Typically a trading desk uh typically a contact center group or or you would have u uh the uh the CEO the C-suite group. You got to look at all these elements and then you start building the transformation story around this. how the features or behaviors of these customers are going to get modernized, right? How are we going to modernize? A bank would have a let's say a secretary to take uh the CXO's meeting notes. How do you build an AI integration to it? And which is the tool that's going to book it with my booking appointments. So you got to look at the the systems that you have not just the cloud PBX the all these systems then you got to look at all the use cases all the personas that you have and then you start planning this uh with with uh with a consultative managed service provider something somebody like that so that you come across and you leverage their learnings and then you go to a transformation phase. It'll take a few uh few months to plan and it could take a years to implement. Uh but if planned well you would be you would have a definite I would say execution timeline otherwise you would be discovering use cases as you go and implement and then you are patching solutions. I think that's a good place to leave it. Rahul thank you very much for joining me today. Uh if people want to get in touch uh what's the best way? Our website is the best way or search anybody from Tata Communications on LinkedIn. Just write to us we will reach out. Thanks again Rahul. And if you like this video please give us a like and a share on social media and we'll see you next time. I've been Christopher Carey for UC Today. Thanks for watching.