VoIP shifts balance of power: new contact center technology introduces a different legacy.

"We had 23 offices across the state of Arizona, no data network, and 11 different legacy phone systems," says Simonsen. "That made communication difficult-both internally and with our members. Our online information system was expensive and provided limited functionality; and our paper-driven business processes were labor-intensive."

Simonsen knew that up-to-date data and voice networks were necessary for the Phoenix-based credit union. After talking with Cisco Systems, he decided that integrating voice and data on a single voice-over-IP (VoIP) network would provide the converged network the credit union needed and the quality-of-service (QoS) tools to make it work.

"I was concerned about the quality of the voice transmission," says Simonsen, "but when I saw the tools for prioritizing the various voice and data packets, I knew we could get good telephone service, as well as a good data network." The new network, connecting 300 employees at 23 sites, was installed in seven months.

"We now have voice, data, video and QoS on one wire," says Simonsen. "Network features, such as integrated voice and e-mail on every PC desktop, increase the efficiency of our associates, and direct-inward dialing and four-digit internal dialing make our associates more easily accessible. We're also using Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) technology to manage incoming calls."

The use of IP communications has substantially reduced costs for the credit union. According to Simonsen, calls from the branches to headquarters, as well as those among branches, now travel over the credit union's private IP network instead of incurring charges on the public telephone network. "We have a fixed cost for carrying the network, but we have no marginal added cost for carrying the long-distance calls among branches," he says.

The credit union lowers costs further by using the network to bypass toll calls within the state and to concentrate out-of-state long-distance calls through a single location. Simonsen estimates a return on investment in 18 months. Controlling costs is only one part of the profitability picture, however.

"This new infrastructure gives us the organizational flexibility we need," adds Simonsen. "We do all of the telephone moves, adds and changes (MACs) ourselves, saving $250 for each MAC order.

"Using IPCC, we can handle incoming calls in various ways, depending on our needs," says Simonsen. "For instance, if a branch is short on employees, we can send its calls to the call center and provide the same high level of customer service. In addition, the product's reporting tolls and chat features let us have an agent to-manager ratio of 15-to-1, about twice what you'd have in a legacy PBX call-center environment."

As a result, the organization is able to handle 30% more calls and the average customer wait time during peak calling times is down to approximately two minutes. Callers can now be queued in the IPCC's IP interactive voice response component, instead of hearing a busy signal when agents are taking other calls. All credit union associates also have a unified messaging solution on their PC desktop, providing them with integrated voice mail and e-mail, and the ability to retrieve all messages, using either channel, from a single inbox.

The fact any associate can log in to IPCC at any time and become a call-center agent has meant cost savings and productivity gains for the credit union. "With a traditional voice solution in the call center, when you have an increase in call volume due to special promotions or other factors, and you want to ensure that members don't just get a busy signal when they call, you need to hire more personnel," Simonsen says. "With this solution, anyone in the company can be a call-center agent at any time. This gives us the flexibility we need to deliver outstanding customer service and keep our costs low."

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RELATED ARTICLE: A study in telephony evolution.

A growing student body with an expanding campus complex demands converged IP telephony system.

As the vice president for information systems and business services at St. Petersburg College in southwest Florida, Conferlete Carney is actively involved in the school's evolution. Since 1927, the two-year junior college has grown into a full-fledged, four-year academic institution, serving more than 17,000 students from 10 sites in the Tampa Bay area.

Yet, the college's migration to four-year status is not the only evolutionary process Carney has witnessed. The college has begun a four-phase program to move from its traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM)-based telephony system into voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), an environment that delivers voice, data and video communications over a single converged network.

"Our decision," Carney says, "was based on the physical layout of our 10 campuses, a major expansion at our Seminole site, the education-specific features that voice over IP can deliver and analyzing the management costs of using just one network to handle both voice and data traffic. We wanted to avoid further TDM investment."

The move to VoIP was motivated by a significant reduction in the time and money spent in adding, removing and changing phone numbers. "Just the simplification of managing the voice network is enough reason to go to IP telephony. In a converged environment, a telephone can be plugged into the network anywhere on campus and keep the same phone number" explains Carney.

The VoIP network also increases the school's capacity to handle future voice and data traffic, and facilitates several advanced applications it plans to integrate into its network. For example, unified messaging can deliver messages through multiple media simultaneously, including wireless, e-mail and traditional voice mail.

Through another application--E911--campus security personnel are instantly notified, and can conference into the call whenever someone on campus calls a local 911 agency. Campus security then works with local police, fire and other emergency services so that an incident is addressed promptly and correctly.

When evaluating each VoIP vendor, Carney and his staff weighed the interoperability factor, whether the VoIP platform would be able to operate reliably on the college's data network, comprised primarily of both Cisco and Extreme Networks routers and switches." We surmised that NEC's VoIP products were engineered to work in an open environment, which enables them to work successfully in virtually any infrastructure."

St. Petersburg College started the upgrade process by installing NEC's NEAX 2400 IPXs at three of its 10 sites, first deploying in strategic locations, such as remote offices and satellite facilities. Other locations are still using traditional circuit-switched telephony until the evolution is complete next year.

"The IPXs are unique in that they allow us to deploy both VoIP and TDM telephony, in any combination, where we need it," Carney says. "As we bring more of our campus toward this converged environment, the IPXs enable us to deliver more VoIP without disrupting the network."

The next challenge was the migration of some 2,000 legacy telephones into IP telephony instruments, capable of handling both existing and future needs." With some VoIP telephones costing in the neighborhood of $700 per unit, a total replacement of our instruments was economically unrealistic," says Jeff Rohrs, telecommunications manager at the college. "NEC provided us with IP adapters that plug into each phone, providing the IP connection for each unit, and they work just as well in TDM environments."

When it completes its evolution, St. Petersburg College will have a total VoIP network with IP telephones, soft phones that are installed on desktop and laptop computers, and wireless converged devices that deliver both voice and data connectivity enterprise-wide--without disrupting the current communications system.

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