Tanua first in SA with Siemens call centre system

In a move showing the growing recognition of young South African entrepreneurial IT companies as robust users of new technologies, Tanua Holdings has recently become the first site in the world outside of Germany to go live with the Siemens HiPath ProCentre system.

Tanua is the international group's first partner to implement the international version of the call centre system, designed to meet the needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and first introduced in Germany eight months ago.

Divisional managing director for Siemens Telecommunications' Enterprise Solutions in South Africa, Hilton Loewenstein, says: "We identified Tanua as an ideal match for us to implement the HiPath ProCentre. In effect, we wanted a partner who is fast-moving, dynamic and young, like Tanua."

The HiPath ProCentre offers SMEs call centre flexibility, with multimedia capabilities and easy convergence with existing PABX systems and business applications. Siemens, with this new system, brings to SME call centres comprehensive telecommunications support, with features such as an automated robotic fault reporting facility. Siemens software programmers remotely fix any faults in the systems (and usually know about these before the user is aware of them), enabling 24-hour call centre functioning for SMEs.

Siemens Telecommunications Sales Representative Lenard Hall says: "For us, an important aspect of this call centre implementation was the fact that we were able to engage well with Tanua as partners. They were willing to take the time to do workshops, and gave us extensive input as to what they wanted, prior to going live. This made the pioneering of this system in SA a smooth one."

For Tanua, the outsourced partner for the product supply, pricing and logistics for Bluebean.com, the selection of a call centre system that could integrate with its own software systems and offer variable functionality was an important step.

Chief operating officer Patrick Bennett says: "We needed a system that would suit our business volumes and culture, be geared to 20 to 30 agents at any time, and offered comprehensive functionality. We integrate multi-channel transactions in our business -- including e-business telesales and other traditional channels -- and have a strong sales culture to our enterprise. Given the nature of our business, we required a system that is flexible and robust, seven days a week. The HiPath ProCentre meets all of these needs."

The linking of call centres to other channels, such as the Internet, is vital in SA, says Bennett. "Our experience is that the vast majority of people prefer to do research and browsing of merchandise online: but still want to phone and speak to a person to complete the sale."

Tanua IT director Wendy Naisby reckons that the Siemens call centre option met the group's philosophy to 'think big, start small, and scale up quickly'.

"The system integrates and communicates smoothly with our own proprietary software, the Tanua Call Centre Interface, as well as with HEAT. This was important for us.

"While our call centre operation is small compared to big players, it is sophisticated. For instance, we use as a natural part of our operations customer relationship management (CRM) strategies, enabled by technology, such as the ability to access full order histories of clients on-screen.

"This enables agents to efficiently re-order and understand customer preferences better. The effective use of converging technologies and powerful back-end software in call centres facilitates superior one-on-one customer relationships and the ability to ultimately offer your customers better prices and service."