Teamwork and Innovation Lead to Success for Regions Financial Corp.

Dec 1, 2003 12:00 PM

Regions Financial Corp., one of the 25 largest financial services companies in the nation, ranks on both the Forbes 500 and Fortune 500 listings of America's largest companies. Whether it is the result of old-fashioned southern hospitality or just good business practices, the Birmingham, Ala.-based corporation has set itself apart from other financial institutions in a variety of ways. The vision of Regions Financial is to be the premier financial services company in the South — a vision that also carries through to the security aspects of the business.

Skip Beaird, director of corporate security for Regions Financial Corp., has responsibility for the security of all of the company's facilities, which he executes through 10 field offices and a central alarm monitoring station. The company determined a few years ago that a change to digital video technology was imminent. “We needed an open architecture, digital video solution that could be installed on our network and provide a method to quickly send video data to law enforcement agencies,” Beaird said. But the company wanted to see some issues resolved before making the switch.

“We waited on the sidelines for everyone to get the kinks worked out, and then we began our due diligence. One of the things we were waiting for was for the judicial system to rule about the use of this technology as evidence,” he says. “We felt confident that the time was right when the FBI released its standards for the recovery, preservation and examination of digital evidence.”

With concerns about standards allayed, the Regions team began seriously looking at digital video security options. They interviewed other banks, received demonstrations of various products and attended some of the annual ASIS International trade shows. The company chose the Lanex Product Group from Verint, Melville, N.Y., as its digital video supplier.

Located in Columbia, Md., Lanex Product Group provides digital video recording (DVR) solutions for commercial, retail, financial and mobile applications. The company specializes in the integration of critical data with digital video, which was an essential factor for Regions.

One of its main requirements was a system that could marry into an existing teller environment and the ATMs. The Lanex system incorporates text into coordinating teller and ATM video data.

Lanex DVRs provide on-site capture and off-site retrieval of video and security data using an embedded operating platform with long-term video storage capabilities. Remote accessibility allows retrieval and administration over LAN/WAN, local or modem connectivity.

“A significant factor in our decision to use Lanex,” Beaird says, “is that it is not proprietary. We can use Lanex equipment with our existing products and maintain relationships already in place with vendors and dealers.”

An integral aspect of the success of the operation is the accommodating attitude and teamwork displayed by the security and IT departments at Regions. “We made a concerted effort to put a methodology in place for this project, and I believe the project management process was key to its successful outcome,” says Bruce Paterson, senior project manager of Regions' IT department. “As the need to identify and implement changing technology becomes increasingly important to all commercial organizations, more and more successful companies are focusing on increasing their capabilities in project management in order to implement the system changes required,” Paterson continues.

The project management process encompasses key concepts about the planning, monitoring and control of a significant undertaking. This approach helps to identify the tasks ahead of time and ensures the right people are involved in the process. By applying recognized project management methods and techniques to a project, its components are closely monitored from initiation to completion and generally forestall unpleasant surprises.

Not only was the teamwork within Regions notable, the synergy between Lanex and Regions was evident. “Lanex has bent over backwards to accommodate us,” Beaird said. “Jim Tipton was our liaison with Lanex, and he was there for every pilot program we conducted, and he played a major role in handling initial concerns from the IT folks.”

After testing the Lanex system thoroughly, Regions has decided to move forward with installation in additional select locations. Regions has developed a risk-rating formula to determine higher-risk bank locations using specific criteria. The formula is based on factors such as average number of transactions conducted, amount of cash processed, or history of incidents. A scoring system determines which location is at the highest risk, thus moving it to the top of the list.

To further enhance the capabilities of the system, HealthCheck software from Lanex remotely monitors the status of each Lanex DVR/CCTV system, as well as connected devices such as cameras, ATM or point-of-sale data capture devices. It retrieves information from the DVR system log and displays it in a graphic “tree view” format. Users can determine at a glance the status of all DVRs selected for automatic polling. By displaying a variety of error, warning and connection status messages, HealthCheck helps the user to troubleshoot and anticipate problems quickly as well as to schedule preventive maintenance.

For the Record

ABOUT THE COMPANY

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Lanex Product Group/Verint

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