Transtel achieves major business benefits with `future-proof` strategy

When Transtel went shopping for a new voice communication solution in 1994, its key requirements were that the new system should be modular, reliable, feature rich, and future proof. Avaya, the former Enterprise Networks Group off Lucent Technologies, proved to have the required solution.

As the telecommunications provider to Transnet (the largest transport company in Southern Africa consisting of a holding company with seven main transport businesses), Transtel operates the largest private telecommunications network in Africa. The scale of the network is vast with systems handling over 45,000 telephones, 30,000 radios and 20,000 computer terminals as well as marine radios, satellite and radar systems. Communications requirements range from providing basic dial-tone service to providing more complex call centre and networking applications.

Because of the scale and complexity of its operations, it was vital that Transtel chose a solution that would be able to continue meeting its changing and expanding requirements over a long period of time.

South African Airways (SAA) in particular, had urgent requirements to replace its outdated systems with state-of-the-art Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), to enable the installation of call centre systems, as a key driver of their business plan development.

The key criteria in deciding which system to use were wide-ranging functionality, an architecture that could be readily expanded in both scale and range of applications, reliability levels of 99.99%, ease of operation in both implementation and support, flexibility in changing business applications, and total life cycle cost.

"After extensive investigations, including visiting Europe and the US, we opted for Avaya`s DEFINITY Enterprise Communications Server (ECS)," said Richard Andrews, divisional manager, Transtel Businesslink. "The DEFINITY ECS is the backbone of the Transnet telecommunications network and, as such, is a mission critical system for us. It was simply the best solution available."

"Avaya`s growth is significant based upon its commitment to, and understanding of, the major business requirement today: flexibility," said Fanie Botha, acting managing director of Avaya in sub-Saharan Africa. "A short-term solution just for today`s problems is not a enough for clients of Transtel`s scale. Avaya`s philosophy is that a solution has to continue to evolve in order to meet the new challenges of a fast-moving business environment."

Avaya`s DEFINITY ECS also offers additional features that attracted Transtel. The powerful and user-friendly management statistics are vital for monitoring network performance. "You can see the situation across all our call centres with the push of a button," said Andrews.

Another feature where Avaya`s technology remains ahead of the pack is Virtual Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), which allows customer calls to be answered from anywhere in the country, and for calls to be routed to agents who have been free for the longest time.

"It can be surprisingly difficult to translate the relatively simple concept of a call centre into the desired business benefit of increased customer satisfaction. Distributing the workload evenly across the call centre is vital to achieving this goal and Virtual ACD is a key technology in this regard," said Botha.

"The DEFINITY ECS has enabled us to achieve our target of all calls to SAA being answered within ten seconds," said Andrews. The solution was initially implemented at SAA and thereafter throughout Transnet.

SAA recently added an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that connects, through the DEFINITY ECS, to SAA`s mainframe. This system allows the public to access a variety of SAA`s data in voice mode. Customer satisfaction levels are rising dramatically since the inception of the system, as it enables efficient, effective customer communications.

Transtel has also further expanded the use of Avaya`s DEFINITY ECS into Europe to route Transnet`s overseas calls via its own satellite network.

"The system is exceptionally reliable. We haven`t experienced any major failures in five years of operation and have enjoyed top-class support. Our choice of Avaya`s technology, based on their ability to provide `future-proof` solutions, has proved to be the best," said Andrews.