March 15, 2005
Over the years larger AXON8000 system owners voiced their desires for
different upgrades to their AXON8000 system to help them cope with their
growing services. Their wishes ranged from more telephone ports and agent
positions to a wide variety of different feature additions. While the
AXON8000 had served reliably over the years and helped make their business
successful, the fact of that success made it necessary to consider moving
to a larger system platform to handle their business growth.
Telescan’s acquisition of Axon Communications has simplified the “new
system” decision process for AXON8000 system owners. Telescan’s
SPECTRUM system, with its companion PRISIM digital switch, represents
a perfect upward system migration path with answers to virtually all
the wishes made by these AXON8000 owners over the years. And, to make
moving up to Spectrum even easier, Telescan has incorporated recent feature
changes into the Spectrum that emulate some of Axon’s familiar
features, and has made moving account data between systems as straight-forward
as possible.
Migrating from the AXON8000 to the SPECTRUM is like moving up to a new
and larger Axon system. Migrating from Axon to Telescan means you’re
still working with a company with a similar business philosophy: to manufacture
quality equipment designed for the utmost in performance and reliability,
to provide excellent technical service support for each and every system
user, and to be concerned for the success of each customer.
Presented below are some of the reasons why the SPECTRUM is a natural
system choice for an AXON8000 system owner.
1. CAPACITY Advantage
SPECTRUM solves system capacity limitations by offering the following.
Up to:
10,000 accounts may be accommodated
32 Operator Positions
72 In-bound telephone ports
32-outbound telephone ports
Up to 232,000 on-line stored messages
Integrated T-1/PRI capability
Value Advantage
The value to you is the built-in, long term growth capability the SPECTRUM
offers your business: the ability to service more clients, and the port
and message storage capacity that help make it possible.
2. ADMINISTRATIVE Advantages
SPECTRUM system activity statistics track account activity in 15-minute
resolution, verses Axon’s 3-hour resolution, which means you see
a more accurate and dynamic view of how many calls per each account are
being handled by your staff. SPECTRUM call volume, operator statistics,
and manpower loading data help you identify the optimum personnel loading
required per shift.
Because faxing is an integrated part of the system, maintenance of only
one database is required. This simplifies the management task by eliminating
the need to make duplicate entries or modifications in two different
systems – the fax message delivery system, and the TAS system.
Value Advantage – Advantages are two-fold:
Simplifying the system manager’s job means time saved to perform
other duties, or to simply allow better focus on employee performance
management and customer service. Providing better and more specific system
and operator performance statistics means more optimum employee scheduling
with attendant cost savings. At the very minimum, the combined effect
of streamlining the system manager’s job, plus more efficient manpower
loading shave one-man shift off your labor costs and annually save you
up to $22,000 or more.
3. IMPROVED Call Distribution
SPECTRUM features a universal call distribution mechanism that more equally
distributes calls among agents, and results in better per- agent performance.
In addition, Answer Groups are easier to set up and don’t require
any special re-programming.
Value Advantage
Better call distribution plus more specific call distribution means better
service for your customers, and potentially lower costs for you. While
difficult to estimate, this feature could shave another 1/2-man shift,
or $11,000 annually off your labor costs.
4. WINDOWS Agent Terminals
SPECTRUM agent terminals feature color-coded call activity areas to help
the agent differentiate between answered calls, holding calls, reminders,
pages, and on-call activities. This feature alone means reduced agent
errors.
Value Advantage
This color-coded, call activity feature means increased call handling
efficiency with reduced call handling errors. This is another feature
that improves the service you provide and offers potential labor savings.
5. ON
CALL SCHEDULER
The SPECTRUM integrated On Call Scheduler is a plus feature not available
on the Axon. The On Call Scheduler is time zone sensitive, and allows
each agent ready access to make schedule changes. In addition, schedule
changes can even be updated directly by the customer when this feature
is web-enabled.
Value Advantage
The value advantage here is three-fold.
1. Having an integrated On Call Scheduler means you can offer a new revenue
producing service to your clients with a potential of generating literally
hundreds of new dollars each month.
2. Having an integrated On Call Scheduler means you have a feature advantage
over your competition and an opportunity of securing new clients.
3. If you already have clients with on-call scheduling requirements,
and if you are using the Axon to handle these clients, then this feature
alone can mean significant cost savings. Handling on-call schedule changes
on the Axon is a significant manual procedure requiring updating printed
information, or information stored on a different computer.
How long, on average, does it take your agents to deal with each on-call
schedule change now? One minute? Five minutes? Let’s assume two
minutes. Using the SPECTRUM integrated On Call Scheduler this time is
reduced to no more than 10-seconds, which means 110-labor seconds saved
for each schedule change!
If your agents make only 400 schedule changes per month, the labor time
savings will amount to 44,000 seconds, or 733.3 labor minutes. At a cost
of $0.65 per labor-minute (1), that amounts to $476.67 per month, or
$5,719.99 per year.
6. INTEGRATED FAXING
An integrated fax message dispatch feature means better message delivery
services for your clients. Why? Because the SPECTRUM offers:
• An expanded numbers of available fax ports
• Reduced congestion at the fax level
• A larger fax-message buffer capacity
• Only one data base to maintain
• One less piece of equipment to worry about
These factors eliminate the need to kill faxes at the Axon queue, which
means time savings for administrative personnel.
Value Advantage
One more important service improvement feature for your clients, plus
elimination of the service fee you may now pay for your FMDS.
7. More efficient ALPHA PAGING
More efficient and easier to set up, better batching characteristics,
better paging throughput. AND, because Overflow Accounts are no longer
required, processing alpha pages can be easier for the agents.
Value Advantage
Another service advantage for your clients – potential labor savings
for you, based upon how many of your accounts are using Overflow Accounts.
8. DTMF
Dialing
If you’re not using DTMF dialing because your Central Office can’t
handle the Axon’s input requirements, but are still using Pulse
dialing for your in-coming and out-going calls, then this PRISIM switch
feature represents a substantial cost savings for you, because it will
let you change to DTMF dialing protocol.
Dialing an average number using pulse dial protocol takes about 10-seconds.
Using DTMF, that same number takes only 2-seconds. This time difference
holds true for incoming as well as outgoing calls. With DTMF, calls will
appear at your system sooner, which means they are answered sooner. And
which means that more calls can be received in a given time period.
Value Advantage
Assume that over the span of a month your system handled 70,000 in-coming
calls and 5,000 out-going calls. Since using DTMF dialing saves 8-seconds
per call, this means that your agents will spend (70,000 call X 8-seconds
per) 560,000 fewer seconds waiting for calls to arrive that month, and
40,000 fewer seconds waiting for dial-outs to complete. That’s
a total of 600,000 seconds, or 10,000 minutes.
10,000 minutes per month X $0.65 per labor minute = $6,500 per month
saved.
OR, $78,000 per year.
Will you really save that much? Actually, what will probably happen is
that more calls will be received and answered because of the DTMF dialing
efficiency. More messages will be taken. More pages performed, etc. Your
monthly billings will likely increase, with the same number of agents.
Either way – you will make more money.
9. PRISIM
DIGITAL SWITCH
PRISIM is a true digital switch with an integrated T-1/PRI capability
and universal DTMF signaling connectivity. You don’t need a channel
bank for T-1/PRI with the PRISIM.
Value Advantage
Savings here are tougher to calculate because of the wide variation of
pricing plans across the country for both T-1/PRI and for DID service.
So, we’re going to leave this one up to you to figure out. You
need to compare your present monthly telephone expenses using independent
DID and dial-out lines verses the same number of lines accessed via a
T-1/PRI connection. We can almost guarantee you will save 30-50% – each
month – using T-1/PRI. You can expect savings in the range of $500
to $1,000 (or more) each month, or between $6,000 and $12,000 annually.
And we’re not even considering the cost of purchasing a channel
bank, its related maintenance, or the added concern of its failure.
10.
E-MAIL and TEXT MESSAGING
Email and text message (to a wireless phone) delivery are features not
available on the AXON 8000. In the SPECTRUM these are task-executed by
each agent right from their keyboard.
Value Advantage
The advantage of these features are the potential added revenue gained
by offering these features to your existing clients, plus the potential
of gaining new clients because you can offer these features.
11.
CUSTOM MESSAGE TICKETS
Imagine that each client can have a specifically designed message ticket,
which surpasses the 50-ticket limit of the AXON8000. With customized
message tickets, call processing will be accelerated and agent errors
reduced.
Value Advantage
Yet another service advantage you can offer your clients. And you’ll
see labor savings because your agents will have a better message form
to deal with – for each client. Messages will be easier to take,
and the messages taken will be more accurate.
12.
ORDER ENTRY
This optional feature is not available for the AXON 8000. When added
to the SPECTRUM it is resident on the system without use of a separate
computer. Which means it’s virtually transparent to the agent and
easy and automatic to use. This is a full-featured Order Entry application.
Complete with scripting, and capable of handling catalogue-sized accounts.
Value Advantage
This represents a new business opportunity for your. Question here is
not how much you can save, but how much more can you earn.
Adding up the above mentioned annual savings produces the following savings
result:
Administrative $22,000
Call Distribution $11,000
On Call Scheduling $ 5,720
DTMF $78,000
T-1/PRI $
6,000
TOTAL $122,720
To be conservative, let’s
cut that in half to $61,360.
This is the amount we believe
you can expect to save using the SPECTRUM system
over your present Axon8000. In fact, you can
probably save enough (or earn enough more) to
pay for the system in a little over one year!
And we haven’t factored-in: (a) the potential added revenues from
offering integrated On Call Scheduling or Order Entry services, or (b)
the “harder-to-figure” savings
NOTES
(1) The $0.65 cost per labor minute represents all collective business
costs divided by the number of labor hours needed to provide service.
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