Keeping pace

Philippine National Bank’s first vice-president and chief technology officer Tony Limtong, Jr. was born in the year of the horse and is as energetic as horse persons come.

Promoted to his new post in March 2000, he immediately set to work on big-ticket projects with the full support of the PNB board led by majority owner, Lucio Tan. On top of his list is the bank’s fully-owned business recovery center (BRC), which was approved by the board as early as April 2000.

Set to be fully operational within the month, Limtong is proud of the bank’s full-fledged back-up disaster recovery facility that can provide 100% support to operational as well as business information requirements.

"The Sept. 11 tragedy brought much controversy on how large businesses and institutions could continue and provide unhampered services to their customers. Due to this, the Bangko Sentral mandated last November 2001 that all banks and financial institutions come up with a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan to avoid disruptions," Limtong said.

By the time the Bangko Sentral issued its order, the PNB was already entering the last phase of critical tests for its BRC.

The bank’s BRC is designed so that 50% of its domestic communications link will not be affected when a disaster occurs. This will allow the bank’s automated tellering machines or ATMs to be operational within two hours and the bank itself to be fully operational within 10 hours of a disaster.

Speed of recovery is extremely important so as not to unduly alarm or prejudice PNB customers. "We service almost half a million Social Security System pensioners, 200,000 Government Service Insurance System pensioners and roughly two million regular depositors," he said.

Projects

Limtong’s second project, which runs parallel to the BRC, is a nationwide communications backbone that breaks up the country into 18 major telecom nodes.

Under this setup, all branches are connected to the nodes. The nodes are equally split and homed either to the main data center at the head office or to the BRC. Simultaneously, there is a redundant link between the telecom nodes for guaranteed connectivity. This has translated into a "sizable reduction in telecom costs without sacrificing bandwidth performance."

A third project is now 95% done and is due for completion next month. PNB is replacing its overseas communication link from international private lease links to international frame relay links. This will increase the bank’s communication bandwidth by four times while reducing its monthly recurring charges by 40%.

"We want to make sure PNB keeps its number position as the choice of overseas Filipino workers in remitting foreign currency funds to beneficiaries anywhere in the country," said Limtong. The bank has 17 overseas branches and roughly 80 representative offices.

In the pipeline

This year, Limtong will begin two more major projects for the bank. PNB is set to replace its current branch delivery system to streamline over-the-counter transactions and branch backroom operations. Tied in to this is the installation of an enterprise application integration or EAI system, which will allow multi-point connectivity between various existing systems, thus streamlining backroom work and allowing the timely submission of critical business reports.

These two project will start towards the latter part of 2002 and will take roughly 18 to 24 months to complete. Estimated cost is between P300 million and P350 million as hardware and software using open systems platform are totally replaced. "These projects will definitely speed up queuing time, given the extremely high walk-in traffic in our branches," Limtong said.

Marketing ally

With approximately 150 regular personnel and 40 project personnel working under six divisions within the IT Group, Limtong is confident his team will be able to support PNB’s requirements in meeting the needs of customers even in the remotest aras.

"I am expected to be proactive, not reactive. I must think ahead of time what would be the possible requirement gaps and minimize the occurrence of off-line services. We are the allies of the bank’s marketing efforts. We have to assure marketing that if they launch a product, we will deliver their requirements on time," he said.

As a CTO, Limtong keeps an open door policy. "It’s very important to be a good listener. You have to encourage a good exchange of ideas, welcome criticism, earn the trust and confidence of the people around you, and keep a firm hand regardless of the situation. If you cut people off when they are making suggestions, no one would come forward, thus sapping creativity and the free flow of ideas," he said.

Proud of his team’s ability to work fast and keep pace with the changing business environment, Limtong tries to live out his motto, "Love your work, not your job." He gives total devotion to the work at hand, beyond the regular aches and hours.