According to one of the big five UK retail banks….

In early 2007, the Board of Directors of one of the UK’s biggest retail banks, identified a business requirement to develop an enterprise communication capability for the Bank to be able to reach their employees more effectively, across digital channels, to their employees, located in hundreds of sites around the UK and in 18 international sites. This capability would benefit the Bank by allowing them to be more efficient and effective in the way they operated their business across a number of areas:

• Business continuity
• Operational process
• Terror & crisis response
• Service delivery
• Property management
• Security
• HR communications
• Branch communications

As part of that decision, a project was initiated within the Bank to firstly identify the specific requirements for this capability and secondly to identify the most appropriate technology that could meet these requirements and provide the desired capability.

The Bank itemised the functional requirements that the business required and compared these to the current digital communication channels they had in place.

Below is a table summarising the findings of this project which idenfity the benefits an enterprise communications platform would bring to the Bank.

Communication method Requirement	Enterprise Communication Plaform	Email	Instant Messinger	RSS	Intranet	SMS	On screen signage
High impact messaging with the ability to interupt work				No	No		No
Audited acknowlegement		No	No	No	No	No	No
Multiple channel support		No	No	No	No	No	No
Audience targeting			No	No	No	No	No
Extensive Management Information and reporting		No	No	No	No	No	No
Business user alert management					No	No	No
Prioritisation		No	No	No	No	No	No
Central management			No	No	No	No
Support for mulitple devices			No		No	No	No