Optimizing Voice Recording for a Global Investment Bank

Voice Recording systems can fail due to technical reasons or incorrect configuration. Optimizing the existing environment at the technical, process and governance level is the best way to reduce the risk of failure and therefore of non-compliance. Like many banks, our client suspected that their VR system was unreliable and was right to question whether a program of manual calls and play-backs by their VR provider’s staff would provide any resolution. Our task was to establish whether the system was working as required, troubleshoot any faults and empower the bank to assure itself of optimum VR performance by providing a refined management system.

Alarm Capture and Monitoring

Alarms can be used to monitor and visualize system health. Their primary transport mechanism is the Simple Network Management Protocol [SNMP]. This simplistic transport mechanism provides limited intelligence on a system. It can fail to capture relevant context to the metadata unless an augmented level of development work is performed.

Our consultants analyzed SNMP agents within each component of the system and configured databases of alarms into a console that was simple enough to be understood by non-technical staff. The SNMP environment was then optimized at the console level which allowed a consistent approach to refinement whereby all false alarms could be filtered out.

A detailed audit and functional testing led to the introduction of a baseline trend of expected, genuine alarm activity. Over defined time periods, actual activity was measured against the baseline which was recalibrated each time to eliminate the flagging of false alarms and to ensure genuine alarms could be acted upon. After a few iterations, the gap became extremely small meaning noise had been all but removed from the system leaving it hugely accurate and reliable.

Process Alignment

Good governance requires human processes to be aligned with technology change. The new console made this much easier. It was intuitive to use and globally accessible which meant the bank could greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of alarm management. The JP Reis team created a “Run-Book” listing the various alarms, their relative priority levels, appropriate responses and escalations.

Outcome

Despite the technical limitations of the legacy system, JP Reis have brought a level of efficacy that is rarely seen in VR environments. The system had been running reasonably well in terms of recording but this fact had been almost impossible to establish before our intervention. Now it runs close to perfection, the bank is fully compliant and can prove it. Rather than using scripted testing that can fail each time there is a change to the VR environment, the calibration approach that our consultants took means that a periodic recalibration is all that is required to ensure that the system is working properly.