Spescom has recently started a multimillion-rand project for insurance company Auto & General which will eventually integrate several regional call centres.
Auto & General had a critical requirement 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. 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 could provide the monitoring and management of the other centres' activities.
Paul Fick, head of customer contact solutions at Spescom, explains: "As one of our oldest clients, Auto & General approached us to make a proposal for the upgrade," he says. "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 complete roll-out at Auto & General's Durban site was done in just two weeks and we are now proceeding with the other centres, all of which will be integrated with the central Call Management System in Johannesburg."
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.
"The success of the Durban site shows that we can meet the client's needs for rapid deployment of world-class technology," says Fick. "We aim at having the other sites upgraded and linked to the central CMS by the middle of 2002.
"This is a solution which 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 CMS 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 Limited is an information and communications technology company listed on the JSE Securities Exchange SA, with operations in the US, UK and SA.
The group is active in two main areas of the world IT market, namely offering product and solutions to connect to the networked economy, and the provision of software solutions to manage information and knowledge.
The strategic focus is on the convergence of knowledge, document, configuration and voice transaction management technologies.
Spescom DataVoice is a wholly owned subsidiary of Spescom Limited and is dedicated to the development and global marketing of its DataVoice products in the area of capture, management, and recreation of live data.
Spescom holds the controlling interest in US-based Spescom Software Inc (formerly Altris Software Inc), a Nasdaq-, OTCBB-listed company, and developer of the award-winning eB software.
In SA, Spescom, in alliance with world leading companies such as Cisco and Avaya, provides a range of customer contact and intelligent network solutions to its blue-chip customer base.
The company is a leading supplier of communications solutions and products to network operators and service providers on the African continent.
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