Husky Refrigeration, Coca Cola Southern Africa`s beverage chiller manufacturer, has installed the Octel Overture 200 voice messaging system from ATIO Corporation as part of its strategic systems upgrade project to align its information systems with The Coca Cola Company`s international standards.
Octel is a proprietary-designed telco-grade voice messaging system based on three-bus architecture ensuring 99,99% line availability.
Husky Refrigeration is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coke`s asset management company, Waveside. Husky supplies beverage merchandising chillers to retailers nationwide through the Coca-Cola bottlers. The company manufactures all coolers in-house and sells locally as well as exporting to the rest of Africa. Manufacturing takes place from scratch and includes the manufacture of the refrigerating units. The company employs 200 staff members.
"Husky has had a good growth pattern over the last five years and there is tremendous potential for the future with the electrification of rural areas, and Coke`s massive marketing drive to ensure success in new, undeveloped markets," says Husky Refrigeration financial accountant Jason Hawkins.
"To maintain our market position and support that growth, we launched a total systems upgrade project two years ago to bring our systems in line with The Coca Cola Company`s standards."
The upgrade involved a migration from internally developed legacy systems to Windows NT, Windows 95, MS Office 97, Lotus Notes and Impact Encore from SysPro as the main back-office application.
On the telecommunications side, the company has followed the Coke standard, installing a Siemens PABX and the Octel voice messaging system from ATIO. A dedicated Diginet line connects Husky to Coke`s local head office and its worldwide intranet.
The Octel contract includes installation, training, support and the Octel Net software package. "One of the main benefits of using the Octel system will be the elimination of lost messages," says Hawkins. "The system`s automated answering system prevents the occurrence of voice-mail jail, always enabling callers who so wish to dial out to a live operator or personal assistant. Users can dial in to collect messages from anywhere in the world and all messages can be saved and stored for later retrieval or backup purposes."
As The Coca Cola Company has standardised on Octel worldwide, Husky Refrigeration is now seamlessly linked to all the other Coke offices worldwide via Octel Net. The system allows users to schedule the time of voice mail delivery, enabling better and more effective communication to offices worldwide.
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