Honestly, we are to the point that we are now considering dumping our XTS investment and starting from scratch with a new system. However, we would need to find a better one to do such a thing.
Our situation is quite unique. We are a small company with 2 locations and several remote teleworkers working from home during non business hours. In this sense, we are a 24/7 operation as there is always someone manning our phones. Our business hours folks talk almost constantly between locations, and our afterhours folks do as well. Right now, those are toll calls.
We are currently developing our own in-house web based ordering system with integrated contact management. We want to be able to tie into our phone system at the "SERVER" level as well as the "Station" level. In other words, we need the ability to basically click on a phone number in our system and have the phone (or system) pick up a line and call that number and route that call to the station that corresponds with the user who made the "click". We also need the ability for our system to tightly integrate with our PBX at the "server" level. When we receive an order, we immediately contact typically 10-20 suppliers out of about one thousand in our database based on their ability to fullfill the customer request. Right now, that means calling them manually one by one. Our system we are designing queries our database and presents us with the closest supplier matches to the customer's request. At this point, an option is provided to our staff member to select each "match" that the system comes up with and presents the option of automatically calling the ones they select with a simple mouse click. Then it grabs several lines at once and calls these suppliers and presents some basic computer generated voice info (basically specs of the order) and allows the supplier to decide if they are interested in the order by pressing a 1 (or whatever) to ring through to the staff member or hang up if they aren't. Our business is EXTREMELY time sensative and every second counts! This would shave off up to a half hour or more of delays.
Right now our teleworkers are on cell phones that we forward our office lines to. Obviously very inefficient, so we are planning on deploying a VoIP system to bring them onto the PBX. They ALSO, need the same CRM/Integration abilities as above.
We currently have an XTSc box at our largest location. No VoIP. We have no PBX at our 2nd (smaller) location. They have basic 4 line phones (office max stuff). We are planning on adding a PBX at this location and networking the two locations together using an IP trunk (rather than a P2P connection due to distance making it too costly) and then serving up the remote teleworkers from the primary (larger) location.
From reading up and from some very helpful advice from members here, I've determined that if we stayed with Vodavi, we would need to move the XTSc box out to the smaller location, buy a new XTS system for the primary location and buy a bunch of extra add on cards such as voip cards, a PRI card for our primary location (as we are upgrading to PRI service there), etc. The expense to do all of this for about 20 total users amounts to an amazingly large sum of money to the point which it seems completely excessive (of course that could be our vendor quoting highly inflated equipment prices, but it would be out of line for me to say that is the case). Also, the Vodavi system doesn't appear to be terribly good at integration like I was speaking of above, but it seems possible (probably using Asterisk as the outbound IVR solution and somehow tying it into the pbx).
My real complaint with the XTS system is the lack of direct support from the company. Everything support related seems to have to go through the local vendor, which to me seems silly when we are dealing with quite an advanced deployment, and I know my vendor is incapable of coming remotely close to understanding this complex situation. They install phone systems, not deal with highly advanced integration design.
Additionally, it seems extremely difficult for the end user admin (ME) to administer my own system without calling in the vendor. I'm sick of spending countless dollars and losing productive time waiting for my vendor to come out to do simple call routing changes that I should be able to do myself. It seems against Vodavi practice to support end users wanting to do this.
Due to the nature of our business we need to have the ability to make changes to our system quickly as call volume increases/decreases or patterns change. We're not a huge company, but efficiency is what allows us to compete with the big guys.
Am I just asking too much from a Vodavi solution? Is it possible for me to fully administer my own Vodavi system and get support directly from the company? I'm not trying to simply cut out my vendor. I need him for certain things such as wiring and hardware installation and initial setup. I just want to be able to do these administration things myself and cut down on some costs and time delays. Plus, considering the potential investment in new hardware, I want to be confident that I can service my own system in the event my vendor went out of business or quit supporting the Vodavi line.
Has anyone here dealt with a more advanced deployment like this using Vodavi equipment? Perhaps a different solution? We've considered using Asterisk for the entire thing, but unfortunately there are some compelling reasons (in my opinion) to avoid that right now (limited phone solid support for 20+ call appearance phones being the biggest one). Yes, we use traditional key style call appearances as we switch a single call back and forth between callers and staff so often it remains vital for us. We've also looked at the Altigen system, which I like a LOT but their latest phone (IP 710) still only supports 15 call appearances and currently offers no options for add on modules. I wish they'd put out a 24 or 30 button model and I'd probably be sold on them right now. I've looked into some of ESI's solutions, but the lack of server based CRM integration likely rules them out even though their phones are perfect for our situation.
I really see our situation becoming more the norm than the exception in the next few years. Yet, it doesn't look like PBX/Systems suppliers are thinking forward and working on this. Most of the integration stuff companies are pumping right now seems more gimick than practical.
Any advice from you experts here? Boy could I use it.
