http://www.networkworld.com/allstar/2007/112607-prudential-mobility.html
Prudential on the go
When Prudential Financial of Newark, N.J., strategizes about enterprise mobility, nobody gets left out -- whether that person is a call-center agent or a trader on the floor.
Other stories on this topic Just about any of its 40,000 employees across the globe, the company reasons, should be able to work from home or on the road just as if they were sitting in an office chair. After all, they need "to be able to respond to customers, access information, get to critical data and communicate with people, and not necessarily from the fixed position they've always been sitting at," says Jim White, a Prudential vice president and IT project leader.
To meet the company's "anytime, anywhere, anyway" goals, IT over the past year upgraded IP PBX systems and deployed new IP phones, Power-over-Ethernet switches, wireless gear and software. Doing so necessitated only a slight increase to the 
$4 million budgeted for a voice and data technology refresh to replace end-of-life products. The company wins a 2007 Enterprise All-Star Award for pushing the boundaries on convergence and mobilization for all employees.
The business units have been highly receptive, says Chuck Pagano, vice president of network design and engineering. "We're starting to integrate most of our businesses into the pilots." And, "from a recruiting and retention perspective, mobility has become a big plus in going after employees dispersed throughout the country," he says.
Increased mobility
A few thousand users across 14 U.S. sites and five international locations are benefiting from this year's upgrades, which will be rolled out across the company in three to five years. For example, since tests began in June 2006, more than 1,000 users have received IP softphones, one of the project's major components.
This lets them manage their office telephones remotely with the capabilities of a desk phone. They no longer must dial repeatedly into the system to retrieve voice mail or change voice mail greetings or pager settings because they've switched locations, for example.
Another 800 call center agents -- nearly one-third of the company's call-center operation -- use comparable agent software on their desktops. (Prudential executives wouldn't discuss which vendors they use, but IP softphone technology is available from Cisco and Avaya, among others.)
This year's work follows from Prudential's initial VoIP deployment in 2004. VoIP now extends to the company's 13 largest offices, representing most of its voice traffic. Prudential's savings, largely because of this year's PBX upgrades, have reached $60,000 per month over the cost of previous calling plans. That number is expected to grow, but it doesn't take into account other ROI factors, such as increased productivity because of rapid deployment of new customer service representatives, and cost avoidance from not having to build new call centers.
The impacts are being felt abroad, too. Prudential employees in Letterkenny, Ireland, log on to the Newark call center, letting agents make and receive calls over the IP infrastructure while controlling call-center phone features on their PCs. "All we had to do was make sure they had the appropriate software," says Dennis Marine, vice president of IS.
In addition to IP agent software and softphones, Prudential has extended IP telephony to 1,600 users and plans to expand that number to 3,000 by year-end. For example, the company has equipped its trading floors in the United States and abroad with IP trading turrets. Now traders have the flexibility of moving from one site to another. Upon logon, they get consistent functions at any floor.
Prudential also has installed 100 wireless access points for 2,000 users and is giving wireless Internet access to guests at Prudential buildings.
Beyond technology
All these technologies have been deployed at other companies. What makes the project distinctive to Prudential is the way it combined these products to give business users substantial benefits while making sure they received the training necessary for a smooth transition. Managers at Prudential weren't used to overseeing remote workers, so IT had to spend a lot of time on internal training and working with human resources departments to develop policies and procedures.
"From a technology perspective, I don't want to say it was easy, but it was simpler than the challenges that were presented when we tried to get management, as well as some of the associates, familiar with managing a virtual team," Pagano says. "That was a little intimidating for some of our managers because it's never been done before [here]."
If technology was the easy part, maybe that's why IT managers decided to give themselves a few extra challenges. Prudential made the strategic decision to make it as easy as possible for employees to use the new systems, and that meant letting users access Prudential networks with their own machines. "We were forced to support [Windows] Vista from a remote-access perspective before we were ready to support it in our enterprise," Pagano says. "That's kind of innovative. A lot of [companies] just do not allow it because of the time required for support."
