A 95 % paper saving at the Allied Irish Banks Group

The customer
The AIB Group, formerly the Allied Irish Banks is the Republic of Ireland's leading banking and financial services organisation. With headquarters in Dublin, the company employs 12,000 people in Ireland alone, where its covers some 40% of the banking market. AIB's network in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK totals 370 branches.
www.aib.ie

Background
AIB has been a user of RSD's report management system since the eighties. The Enterprise Output Solution (EOS) runs on the bank's OS/390 platform. AIB has split EOS into 9 different systems defined by area of activity. EOS has 20,000 users and there are often as many as 300 to 350 individuals logged on to the system simultaneously. In an average week, RSD's EOS handles 154 million lines of input, of which about 13% (20 million lines) are printed.

AIB Logo

Rationalising print

EOS is used primarily to distribute information for viewing, thus effecting print reduction. However, as not all AIB's branches are equipped for high volume viewing, some reports are still printed centrally in order to limit expenses of local printing. EOS efficiently manages this printed output by automatically sorting and bundling to prepare it for distribution. A big challenge for AIB is the continual rationalisation of paper printing. "Our systems produce up to 110 different reports on a nightly basis", says John Smith, AIB's Output Services Manager. "Before we introduced EOS, every branch was getting each of these 110 reports, amounting to hundreds of pieces of paper. EOS allowed us to centralise this data for a one time overnight extraction. Now, the branches get report sections. From that we were able to build on the on-line viewing capabilities of the product and have reduced physical flow of paper in very many areas".

AIB Landscape photo

Cost savings

In the early 90s, AIB's Credit Card Department requirements led the company to consider exploiting EOS's viewing capabilities. The department was generating a huge amount of output, using up to 7 or 8 boxes of paper on a daily basis and a team of 6 people to distribute it around the company's buildings in the morning. With the objective of reducing paper consumption by 80% and cutting back on the physical distribution of this material, the company moved to on-line viewing using EOS. The actual reduction figures came to 95%! "That is our biggest success. In that context we used EOS to eliminate paper and to introduce efficiency" explains Smith.

Delivering business continuity

"From a business continuity perspective, we are wholly dependant on the service provided by EOS for reports in our Credit Card or Capital Markets areas. We also have a huge dependency in terms of retention of some of our key report data, as in some instances, the
only copy of data we have is within EOS. For rationalisation purposes, the situation is likely to evolve towards eliminating data from elsewhere and keeping it within EOS only. That's how critical EOS is to AIB's business" explains Smith.

A business partnership

When RSD products are used, they usually play a central and business critical role in an organisation. For this reason RSD prides itself on engendering strong business focused relationships with its customers. "I need to be confident that our business partners understand our business and will keep me aware of the product evolution and how it can be applied to our operation," says Smith. "Some companies just remember us when there is a problem or the prospect of a sale. My relationship with RSD is the way I like to do business".

Future with EOS - Browser interface

"AIB is now looking into providing its branches with extended access to EOS. This is in order to further decrease the reliance on paper reports and give these users access to rapid on-line viewing of information", says Smith. "We have upgraded our Branch Telecommunications Network and we are looking into upgrading the branches workstations. We could then consider the EOS Web browser interface as a serious option to access the data. So, we will again look to EOSto deliver cost savings and productivity gainsfor the bank".

Supporting business efficiency

"EOS has been helping us to reduce costs, but more significantly, the easier access to the data facilitated by EOS has contributed to increased productivity at AIB" Smith concludes.

This case study demonstrates RSD's longterm commitment to providing products that meet the needs of its clients to decrease costs while increasing the usability of their information.

For more information, contact us at info@rsd.com

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