Specialist telecommunications distributor, Siltek Telecoms, reports that Freedom, the new call recording system from Dictaphone, is already winning tributes from industry observers.
C@ll Center Solutions magazine and CTI magazine both named the new open-architecture system the winner of their 1999 Product of the Year awards. The industry accolades follow the recent announcement by Dictaphone that it has received more than $7.5 million in orders for the Freedom system, designed for small to medium-sized commercial contact centres and trading applications.
"The strong early orders for Freedom, dating from the USA launch in October, represent the fastest start from any new Dictaphone recording system in memory and we anticipate similar growth here in South Africa," says Michael Aitken, MD of Siltek Telecoms.
The new Freedom recording system is based on a design that lets contact centres store voice recordings on any network-attached storage device, without being locked into a proprietary device.. Users can also upgrade to a different storage device should their existing hardware become obsolete.
Using standard file access methods like SMB, NFS, and FTP, Freedom allows users to easily take advantage of any existing or anticipated future storage device. Additionally, Freedom's plug-in telecommunications interfaces and operating system-independent architecture mean that Freedom can easily adapt should an organisation upgrade its phone system, operating system or network. In addition, the system includes easy-to-use agent evaluation forms and reports for quality monitoring applications.
Furthermore, Freedom provides more ways to access and share voice recordings than offered by conventional systems. Its network-ready design and standard audio file format make voice files accessible over any LAN/WAN, Internet or Intranet, using any multi-media PC. Compressed .wav file recordings can be e-mailed - a faster way to share information than copying and shipping tapes.
Unlike traditional recording systems, in which the telecom interface and archive device are embedded in the recorder, Freedom uses a modular design that allows it to easily adapt to changing requirements over time.
"Freedom's openness makes it extremely scalable," adds Aitken. "As your centre grows, you can select a higher capacity network-attached storage device without replacing the recording system."
The Freedom system consists of three separate components: telecom module, recording module, and archive/playback station. The telecom module interfaces directly to a contact centre's phone system for direct digital recording, thereby eliminating the cost of handset couplers and external digital-to-analogue conversion devices. Freedom's modular design means the archive/playback station and recorder can be kept nearby in a supervisor's office, while the telecom module is rack or wall-mounted in the PBX room, doing away with wiring headaches.
"Freedom is getting a very enthusiastic response from the marketplace. Internationally, it has exceeded all of Dictaphone's sales expectations," concludes Aitken. "These awards echo what customers are saying - that Freedom is giving them the advanced capabilities they've been waiting for."
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Siltek Telecoms
Siltek Telecoms is a specialist telecommunications distributor within the Siltek IT Supply Chain Group, and has agreements with some of the world's leading vendors. It is the master distributor for Lucent Technologies' range of voice products and Active Voice Corporation's portfolio of PC-based voice processing systems and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) solutions. Controlled by Kunene Technology Ltd, Siltek Telecoms is committed to becoming the supplier of choice for telecommunications VARS and independent resellers.
Siltek Limited
Siltek Limited is the leader in the Southern African Information Technology (IT) Supply Chain with projected turnover of R3-billion in the year to end-June 2000. Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Siltek comprises several complementary operating divisions, each of which is a dominant player in its niche area.
For over a century, the Dictaphone name has continued to be synonymous with excellence and innovation in business communications equipment. The company traces back to 1880, when Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the Volta Prize for inventing the telephone. It was the following year, that Bell, his cousin, Chichester Bell, a chemical engineer, and Charles Sumner Tainter, a scientist and instrument maker, took on their first team project, finding a practical way of recording sound for use with the newly invented telephone. Today, Dictaphone is a leader in the development, manufacture, marketing, service, and support of Integrated Voice and Data Management (IVDM) systems and software, which include dictation, voice processing, voice response, unified messaging, records management, court recording, call centre monitoring systems and communications recording. Dictaphone has a world-wide marketing, sales, service, and support organisation of more than 1,600 representatives in over 190 U.S. cities, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France and Italy, and dedicated dealers in 40 other countries. Company sales revenues in 1995 were approximately $353 million and current market research indicates that Dictaphone holds over 65% of the global voice recording market.