Clarity and snom products in use at international SAZ company group
Flexible IP telephony for highest demands
The SAZ company group, headquartered in Switzerland, develops and offers branch solutions for marketing and sales in the area of direct marketing services and household databases. SAZ is present on a lot of markets in Europe and Asia.
The requirements of the new system
In view of its growing business and to make the expansion of its internal communication structures especially with respect to new customer acquisitions and customer relationship management future-proof, SAZ decided to replace its outdated telephone system with a flexible IP-PBX at the beginning of 2009. It was especially important to take into consideration that almost half of the 350 workplaces were call centre places while other workplaces required a modern telephony system that met the usual Office requirements. In addition to the headquarters of the international SAZ Group in St. Gallen (Switzerland), the locations of Garbsen (Germany), Hoofdorp (the Netherlands) and Warsaw (Poland) were to be connected to the new IP telephone system and all of the workplaces equipped with the same VoIP telephones. Choosing a telephone system with open interfaces to smoothly connect the company’s front and back end was of particular importance to SAZ.
The choice: Clarity Communication Center & snom 360
- snom 360
The contract was awarded to Clarity AG, a company located in Bad Homburg (Germany) and a provider of software-based voice communication solutions for call centre and business telephony. In SAZ’s case, Clarity recommended a Clarity Communication Center-based solution especially tailored to the company’s needs. The Communication Center is a modular telephone software that provides a number of functions such as comfort telephony, telephony extension and telephony automation as well as a voice portal on one platform. The product portfolio is rounded off with the Clarity Contact Manager, hosted/managed services and a range of solutions surrounding Voice over IP. For years now, Clarity has been using VoIP telephones manufactured by snom technology AG, a company located in Berlin (Germany), to realise its projects.
snom’s VoIP telephones are based on the open SIP standard and meet Clarity’s high demands thanks to their interoperability, broad range of functions and quality. SAZ wanted telephones suitable both for call centre workplaces as well as typical office telephony and that ensured future-proof interoperability. The snom 360 was chosen, a phone with twelve programmable function keys, LED, a hands free mode, a headset port and a large adjustable graphical display. Further characteristic features include a multi-language menu, an integrated XML mini-browser, support for high security standards (SIPS/SRTP, TLS) and high-energy efficiency. This was exactly the right model for SAZ because the phone is easy and convenient to use and has all of the necessary functionalities. Karsten Klemm, executive director at SAZ smart.net GmbH, emphasises: “It was especially important to us to not to have to depend on a system with specific devices but rather to have a flexible, compatible and future-proof solution.” Another decisive point was snom’s international presence. For SAZ, which also operates globally, snom’s international branches and partners meant that procurement and support are also available abroad for snom end devices.
The successful migration
After a successful test installation in January 2009, Clarity began with the implementation of the system in the spring. The specialists at Clarity installed the highly scalable Clarity Communication Center with classic call centre functionalities and different modules for the business telephony. In addition to the SAZ locations, which are connected to each other via IP, the solution also permits connections to external agents. Open Clarity interfaces enable SAZ to carry out its own system administration and use the Clarity Skript Editor to quickly change call flows and implement comprehensive IVR (interactive voice response) solutions. This makes it possible for SAZ to react very quickly to data protection requirements and changes – for example with a special interactive voice menu with which called parties can receive information in accordance with legal regulations. While this allows SAZ to provide legal certainty with respect to data protection for its customers, Clarity realised the system’s technical security via redundancy systems and system fallout security in the event of a lapse in the internal telephony’s IP line. In case of a disturbance in the WAN network between the locations, calls will automatically be established via the PSTN.
Clarity’s telephone system in combination with the snom 360 VoIP telephones has been successfully in use since July 2009. Special signalling on the telephone displays and LED function keys were configured to meet the customer’s needs and different functions such as call reception, call forwarding and phone number transmission were adjusted to users’ requirements. “At the beginning, employees had to of course get used to the new telephones’ functionalities”, Klemm reports. The people at SAZ are more than fully satisfied with the new system and the VoIP telephones. “We particularly appreciate the system’s flexible configurability and that we are able to manage the system on our own”, concludes Karsten Klemm.
The customer:
SAZ company group, St. Gallen,Switzerland
The Task:
Integration of 4 European branches including all 350 callcenter seats
The special requirement:
highliy flexible VoIP-solution based on Open Standard, Integration of a multitude of business features
The solution:
snom 360
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