Banks Get Telepresence

SAN JOSE, Calif. and ARMONK, N.Y. -- Cisco (NasdaqGS:CSCO - News) and IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) today announced the launch of two additional offerings for enhancing the retail banking experience that build on their Front Office Solutions for Retail Banking announced in November 2007. The Optimized Self-Service and Cisco TelePresence(TM) solution modules help enable retail banks to use their experts more efficiently for direct client interaction regardless of where they are located or which delivery channel (e.g. phone, Internet, video, telepresence, etc.) they are using for communications.

Today, financial institutions are working closer with customers to provide more personalized and up-to-date products and services that better meet their customers' changing financial needs. Independent of the time of day or the delivery channel that clients utilize, banks are striving to deploy technologies and information technology (IT) architectures that help improve business processes to optimize a collaborative customer experience.

Cisco TelePresence(TM) for Banking allows users to experience virtual face-to-face interactions with others in any global location, and it eliminates the cost, time and carbon footprint associated with physically traveling to meetings. The value of Cisco TelePresence helps retail banks transform their collaboration at three levels:

At Bank of Montreal (BMO), enhancing internal collaboration, reducing travel costs and taking a green approach were at the top of its agenda. "BMO Financial Group has offices in Canada and around the world, and our employees log more than 60 million miles per year on business travel. At last, Cisco TelePresence video conferencing presents a real alternative to meeting face-to-face, and thanks to the high-resolution images in the technology, it's almost as if you were in the same room," said BMO's Michael Thornburrow, senior vice president, Corporate Real Estate & Strategic Sourcing. "Cisco TelePresence is an important contribution to our plan to achieve carbon neutrality, and it will help us remove tons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere every year. The Cisco team has been great partners on this project at every step along the way."

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)