Spescom, the multinational technology innovator, recently implemented a multimillion-rand project for the national insurance company Auto & General, which is aimed at integrating several regional call centres.
Auto & General's primary concern was for centralised monitoring of the efficiency of its dealings with customers. Commanding a large share of SA's short-term insurance market and being focused on transactions conducted by phone, Auto & General was one of the first local companies to use the latest equipment and systems to support its front-office operations.
As far back as the mid-1990s, Auto & General was already using a Lucent solution, provided by Spescom, in its Johannesburg contact centre.
By the middle of 2001, it was obvious that an integrated, upgraded solution was needed, operating on a national basis to support all the company's call centres. This was required for Auto & General operations in Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban, with smaller branch centres in Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein also helping to handle the company's massive volumes of calls from both prospective and existing clients. The centre in Johannesburg was chosen to provide the monitoring and management of the other centres' activities.
Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion, explains: "It all started in the middle of 2001 when we proposed a call centre solution for the Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria branches. In early 2002, we were again requested to quote on Avaya Definity equipment. The proposal was accepted and the order was placed on 22 February 2002.
"The first step was to achieve a proof of concept by test installing Spescom DataVoice recording equipment at one site and integrating the recording solution into the contact centre and back-office systems.
"This was successfully implemented. The only difficulty thereafter was deciding on the specification for the full solution, which included Avaya Definity call centre systems and the Avaya CenterVu call management system (CMS).
"In the end - as a result of complex planning and negotiation issues - we had only two months from quote acceptance to the first installation. Bearing in mind the lead times for bringing the equipment into the country, we were under pressure to make it happen in the specified time frame."
The proposed solution included the following for each of the main branches:
Durban
* 25-seat call centre
* 50 back-office users
* Integrated recording solution
* Call Management System statistics
Cape Town
* 50-seat call centre
* 50 back-office users
* Integrated recording solution
* Call Management System statistics
Pretoria
* 50-seat call centre
* 80 back-office users
* Integrated recording
* Call Management System statistics
Johannesburg
* The Call Management System was upgraded to a centralised Call Management System serving all the other sites.
"The complete roll-out at Auto & General's Durban site was done in just two weeks," says Fick. "With 25 call centre agents in Durban, 50 each in Cape Town and Pretoria and typically twice as many back-office workers needing access at each site, it is a complex project which required the latest Avaya technology to achieve the goals set by the client. Another two sites have been added to the total solution - being Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth.
"The success of the Durban site and subsequent installations shows that we can meet the client's needs for rapid deployment of world-class technology. This solution covers all Auto & General's needs, as well as offering potential for being scaled up in the future. The transparent integration of DataVoice recorders and Avaya systems has allowed us to provide a cost-effective system which provides efficient Call Management System reporting for a national network of call centres - all of which has been accomplished in a very tight time frame."
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Spescom is a multi-national technology innovator with direct operations in the US, UK and SA.
The group is publicly listed on the JSE Securities Exchange SA (Spescom Ltd), and on the NASDAQ OTCBB : ALTS.OB (Spescom Software Inc).
Spescom addresses the information and communications technology market providing both products and solutions to connect to the network economy, as well as enterprise software to manage information and knowledge.
Specifically, Spescom provides solutions in the areas of access network; enterprise information management, multimedia transaction recording, broadcast, customer contact centres and test and measurement.
Spescom markets its products worldwide through appointed partners and distributors under the eB brand for its enterprise software, and the DataVoice brand for its multimedia transaction recording solutions.
Spescom's global customer base consists of multi-national organisations including leading enterprises in the utilities, telecommunications, transportation, financial, banking and insurance sectors.
Worldwide, customers include Siemens, British Telecoms, Network Rail (formerly Railtrack), Lloyds of London, Barclays Bank, Abbey National Bank, WH Smith, Caterpillar, Bechtel, AmerenUE, Entergy, Bombardier, Ocean Energy, Sempra Energy, Telkom, SABC, Old Mutual, Eskom, Transnet, First National Bank.
For more information on Spescom, please visit www.spescomsoftware.com and www.spescom.com.
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