| The Client
Raiffeisen Bank Romania, a majority-owned subsidiary
of Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich,
ranks among the leading and fastest growing financial institutions
in Romania. It is the third largest retail bank in Romania
and the largest Raiffeisen subsidiary outside of Austria.
The strategy of the bank is to consolidate a leading position
in the local market, providing a full range of products
and services for individual, small medium enterprises (SME)
and corporate clients via its 200 outlets network as well
as via alternative distribution channels—ATMs, POS
devices and Internet.
Since 1999, Raiffeisen Bank Romania has used Euronet's
Integrated Transaction Management Software (ITM) for their
debit card, ATM, POS and merchant management services.
The Challenge
Prior to partnering with Euronet, Raiffeisen Bank Romania contracted
multiple vendors to service its second line maintenance (SLM) and hardware needs
and was spending valuable management time handling its cash in transit (CIT)
needs for its branches and off-site ATMs. Cash reconciliation presented many
challenges and branch staff spent considerable time providing direct ATM support,
instead of selling services to customers.
Consequently, Raiffeisen Bank Romania was seeking an outsourcing
partner who could enable it to reduce its operational costs
significantly, meet the needs of corporate and retail customers,
and acquire a larger portion of the rapidly increasing Romanian
card market. The bank needed to focus on establishing and
maintaining new account holder relationships and was seeking
to provide innovative ATM and POS services.
The Solution
To meet these challenges, Raiffeisen Bank Romania chose Euronet to provide
end-to-end ATM, EFT POS, and Transaction Gateway Outsourcing Services in September
2003. This decision was based on the bank's strong existing software relationship
with Euronet and Euronet's proven track record in providing outsourcing
services for Raiffeisen and other EMEA banks. Raiffeisen Bank Romania is Euronet's
fourth partnership with a Raiffeisen subsidiary following its successful ATM
Outsourcing implementation in Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary.
Raiffeisen Bank Romania contracted Euronet to provide a comprehensive
outsourcing solution for ATM and POS operation and management
service, including Visa and MasterCard transaction gateway
routing, settlement, reporting services, stand-in-processing,
and value-added services such as electronic top-up and bill
payment for the banks' current 650 ATMs and 4,200 POS
terminals.
The Results
The migration of the bank's ATMs to Euronet EMEA Operations Center
(EOC) in Budapest was completed two months ahead of the five-month schedule.
This included a two-month pilot phase, with an SLA agreement in place, which
required 95% ATM uptime, 99% telecom uptime, 99.9% host availability, and several
other KPIs.
Euronet set up all in-country operations for Raiffeisen
Bank Romania in record time including the establishment
of a local office, hiring and training of staff, and implementation
of rigorous operations procedures based on Euronet's
best practices in multiple markets.
Euronet transitioned all ATM operations related tasks
out of the bank's branches to a single CIT company
and now has all SLM companies reporting to it directly.
Raiffeisen Bank Romania's former central ATM management
staff is now focused on service level management and Q&A
efficiencies.
Although it is too soon to evaluate the cost savings component,
Euronet and Raiffeisen Bank Romania are diligently working
to implement all targeted operational efficiencies so that
the bank can effectively reorganize its staff to the desired
areas of focus. |
