Lumen Technologies: innovating to support Finastra

Lumen Technologies is a multinational technology company that enables companies to capitalise on emerging applications and power the 4th Industrial Revolution. 

In doing so, the company integrates network assets, cloud connectivity, security solutions and voice and collaboration tools into one platform. This enables businesses to leverage their data and adopt next-generation technologies.

Discussing the company, Ian Cunningham, Vice President EMEA Sales and Customer Success said: “We support financial organisations, manufacturing organisations, and pharmaceutical organisations to name a few, but also we work very closely with leading cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.”

He added: “We have a fast and secure platform that enables data and applications, and really allows businesses to capitalise on that and use those technologies to provide a great experience for their customers and also for their employees as well.”

One key client for Lumen is the financial technology provider, Finastra. With a relationship spanning nearly a decade, Lumen and Finastra have worked closely to understand how each other operates.

Cunningham explained that in the last three years, this relationship with Finastra has developed into a more strategic one. This began with a programme to consolidate Finatra’s WAN infrastructure. Supporting Finastra’s ‘One Finastra’ initiative, Lumen worked to consolidate what had previously been 13 different vendors into one managed WAN infrastructure.

“Finastra has been very open in sharing the strategy and vision for the organisation, and the direction in which they're going. We've spent time developing a strategy with them on how Lumen can support that,” said Cunningham.

He added: “Building on from their network consolidation, we've worked very closely with Finastra in terms of modernising the contact centre and how they engage with their customers. We've introduced a new solution for them that effectively provides an omnichannel experience for their customers. This has become even more prevalent in light of COVID-19. It has allowed their customers to communicate with them and also engage with them through multi-channels in a way that is suitable to the customer.”

On top of this, Lumen has helped put in place a unified communications solution for Finastra. This system was designed pre-COVID and was originally meant to be implemented just as the pandemic struck.

As with many organisations, Finastra’s priorities changed due to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. To respond to these changes in circumstances, Lumen sat down with Finastra to create a solution that would meet its new priorities.

“With Finastra, we started talking about how they were looking to collaborate and move forward. This meant completely adapting the solution that we had designed. That's a good example of our ability to be flexible, to adapt to changing demands, both within Finastra but also in the market as well.” Cunningham said.

He concluded: “Being adaptable and understanding exactly what our customers need is very important to us as an organisation; it is ultimately at the heart of it. We want to make sure that the success of our customers is paramount.”