Business

Saturday November 14, 2009

More banks opting for video tech to cut costs

By DALJIT DHESI


KUALA LUMPUR: Banks are increasingly adopting video content technology to communicate with their branches without incurring travelling costs and other operating expenditure.

In Malaysia, some local and foreign banks were already in talks to implement video technology such as Cisco’s TelePresence to enhance efficiency and boost revenue, said Cisco Systems (M) Sdn Bhd (Cisco Malaysia) managing director Anne Abraham.

TelePresence is a high-definition video and audio technology that allows live meetings to be held in different locations with multiple organisations at the same time.

“This will save travelling costs and other operating expenditure while enhancing the efficiency and productivity of an enterprise,” she said.

Abraham told StarBizWeek that local banks with existing branches overseas or expanding offshore would stand to benefit substantially by using video content technology.

“We saw a huge market transition from data and voice to video technology in the last few years as more companies are recognising the potential of video in the transformation of their businesses,’’ she said.

An analyst with an investment bank said technology was an important tool for banks to enhance their efficiency, adding that video technology such as TelePresence was fast gaining ground to facilitate a bank’s expansion, be it locally or abroad.

An official with a local bank which has overseas presence agreed that with many Malaysian banks venturing into new markets, TelePresence would enable them to conduct virtual business interactions anywhere and anytime, hence saving substantial costs.

On the difference between video conferencing and TelePresence, Cisco Malaysia director for sales Albert Chai said: “Unlike video conferencing, TelePresence creates life-like, in-person experiences so that people everywhere can work, live and learn together in person over the network.

“It is a high-definition virtual meeting environment that creates a live, face-to-face experience over the network, empowering users to interact and collaborate with others like never before.”

“TelePresence is built to take interaction and collaboration to a new level, as it feels like everyone is in the same room and interactions are just as natural and effective as in-person communication,’’ Chai said, adding that this was lacking in video conferencing.

Abraham said one of the main reasons video conferencing had not taken off in a big way despite it being in the market for some time was the inadequate infrastructure and user experience.

Cisco expected about 90% of Internet traffic in the world would be in the form of video in the next three years, she added.

According to Abraham, the importance of video technology could be seen from Cisco’s latest survey which estimates that video communications traffic, including video over instant messaging and video calls, would increase 10-fold from 2008 to 2013.

Almost 64% of the world’s mobile data traffic was expected to be in video in 2013, she noted.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s Household Use of The Internet Survey 2008 revealed that 63.5% of household Internet users in Malaysia used the Internet for leisure in the form of video, music and games, an increase from 52.7% in 2007.

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