The number one Swiss tyre dealer goes for an IP telephone system
Sindelfingen/St. Gallen, 9 February 2010 – Pneu Egger has changed its telephone system in favour of an innovaphone system (www.innovaphone.de/). The tyre dealer has 38 branches across Switzerland and all 340 employees are now using IP telephones from the Sindelfingen based IP telephony specialists, innovaphone. The innovaphone PBX is the core of this future-safe solution. Pneu Egger was founded in 1949 and is the number one tyre dealer in Switzerland with annual sales of 400 000 tyres.
Up to a few weeks ago, Pneu Egger’s 38 branches had a mixture of everything that has been available on the market over the past years - analogue telephone systems, ISDN systems with one or more channels, some leased, some bought. Rapid company growth also through acquisitions meant that the infrastructure was random and far from being homogeneous. This had its price: the telephone system had high maintenance costs, was inflexible and highly complex. An even larger hurdle for the company was the fact that the existing infrastructure would not allow for any kind of computer-telephony integration - an unsatisfying situation for the Swiss market leader as the telephone is its most important selling tool.
The outdated systems often failed and quickly reached their maximum capacity limits: Oliver Klee, project manager in charge of VoIP migration at Pneu Egger commented, “Our telephones never stop ringing in the busy spring and autumn periods when people need their tyres changing”. The IT manager went on to say, “During peak hours we receive more calls than we can actually answer. Our previous PBX did not provide us with the necessary flexibility to forward waiting customers quickly and easily to the next available employee. It is very important for incoming calls to be forwarded correctly even when there is a sudden stampede of customers”.
Pneu Egger placed specific requirements on its future telephony concept. It was to be a homogenous communication infrastructure working across locations; it should be easy to manage, reliable, flexible and most importantly reasonably priced. The system should also be able to deliver customer and billing information. Furthermore the tyre specialist wanted to install a cost efficient telephone system which would cover all locations, including headquarters and the smaller branches. Pneu Egger also intended to remain provider independent and to use the already existing dedicated lines for the new telephone system.
Besides the innovaphone VoIP solution being “good value for money”, one other main reason in favour of this system was its “excellent flexibility”. Project manager Mr Klee was also convinced by the fact that the system had no rotating fans, which would be potential malfunction components. Mr Klee commented, “Companies like ours, where dust is a common occurence really appreciate a telephone system without any rotating parts“. He went on to say, “This may not be an issue in a normal office environment, but devices with normal fans will definitely not last long in a tyre dealership.”
As already mentioned, one positive aspect of the innovaphone solution was its flexibility. The new solutions were to incorporate the exisiting DECT telephone systems. This was easy as the innovaphone solution is entirely standard-based. Mr Klee justified the selection in favour of the innovaphone system by saying, “All functionalities are available across all locations and remote administration and remote maintenance are possible through a central unit. These are the facts which spoke in favour of the innovaphone solution.”
Centralised system maintenance means concrete cost savings for the tyre specialist. Whereas in former times, even minor maintenance work in the branch offices had to be done on location by external service teams, now Oliver Klee and his team are able to do the tasks themselves. Standard web browsers are used to access the internal IT from headquarters and they can reach every single device at any company location.
The changeover to VoIP brought further cost cuts: The number of basic access lines could be reduced drastically. Previously, every branch had had its own basic access line, however the current telephone system needs just one junction to the public network. This connection is actually only needed to guarantee emergency calls. Investing in a VoIP telephone system is worthwhile even if you only take into consideration the savings made with basic access lines.
The project began in January 2008 and was completed a few weeks ago. The number one Swiss tyre specialist now uses two IP6000 in its head office, several IP1200 as DECT systems and a large number of IP 302 and IP 305 for the platforms in the branches. All desk telephones have gradually been replaced by innovaphone IP phones, namely IP110 and IP230. The old PBX was shut down after a successful short test phase. The changeover ran smoothly without a hitch.
The project managers at Pneu Egger were very pleased with the result. Oliver Klee happily reported, “The planning, configuration and project management stages of the rollout ran perfectly thanks to collaboration with innovaphone and the system house partner Telefonbau Schneider, specialists for networks and infrastructures. “Employees are content to work with the technology from Sindelfingen and the changeover was hardly noticed by all.”
