Banking on a WAN

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: In its endeavour to bring in smooth business functioning and effective service delivery, Mahesh Sahakari Bank, an urban cooperative bank, was in need of a network infrastructure that was available, scalable and reliable. Established in 1972, the bank was witnessing robust growth. It conducted its operations from nine branches in Pune and one in Mumbai.

To withstand the increase in its growth, the bank required an architecture that would connect its distributed branches and support the central banking application. The basic objectives set forth for the exercise were implementation and execution of a wide area network (WAN) switching infrastructure for branches, availability to its end users, intelligent enough to support the existing applications and flexibility in the infrastructure to accommodate new services.

The first challenge that the bank faced was to network its branches with a WAN that allowed it to extend its reach. To address this concern, they needed a network infrastructure that leveraged the technological advancements, supported the existing distributed banking applications and reduced operating costs. The deployment of a WAN allowed the bank to move towards a centralised mode.

Pramod Kulkarni, managing director, Mahesh Sahakari Bank, asserts, “The migration to a core banking system paved the way for a better management information system. This resulted in the streamlining of many processes for the bank. It guaranteed the dual benefits of centralised data and core banking.”

Centralised data enabled the bank to gain easy access to information. Also, the end result was seamless connectivity between the bank’s head office, its branches and its users. It also presented the bank with the opportunity to offer new services, namely mobile and internet banking.

In addition to this, the bank also leveraged the audit services that resulted in a conclusive analysis, thereby helping the bank customise its offerings. An example of this would be the results of the analysis based on the transactions that facilitated the bank’s understanding of investment schemes favoured by its customers. This initiative enabled the bank to customise and formulate a suitable investment scheme. The automated reports provided by the management information system ensured that the bank was in a position to generate error-free documents to be submitted to regulatory bodies.

The objective behind the implementation was to put in place an infrastructure that would support the bank’s existing application platforms and at the same time be sufficiently flexible to accommodate the roll out of new services.