ABOUT TAX TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Tax Technologies, Inc. (TTI) provides consultation and technology solutions to corporate tax departments at reasonable costs. The TTI team helps clients maximize their tax application and planning processes.
The challenge
Approximately 95 percent of TTI’s 100-plus employees in the U.S. are telecommuters. The company also has about 125 employees working in a centralized office in India.
TTI was using an outsourced proprietary solution with limited (and hard to use) features. The system had poor voice performance, resulting in up to 40 percent dropped calls
required a separate solution for voice conferencing.
TTI was looking for a reliable, open standards-based unified communications solution
they could manage on their own with integrated applications (such as voice conferencing) to drive productivity and save money.
The solution
TTI deployed the perfect fit: the Avaya Software Communication System (SCS). Easy to manage and simple to use, this Unified Communications (UC) software solution is based on open standards using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), providing a highly interoperable, future-proof solution. SCS provides powerful UC capabilities, including secure presence and Instant Messaging (IM), integrated voice conferencing, unified messaging, Find Me/Follow Me, desktop-based video conferencing, voice and video call recording, and integration with Microsoft and IBM applications.
For additional reliability, TTI chose the SCS High Availability option, which offers dual-server redundancy to maximize overall performance and reliability.
Most TTI employees use the Avaya 3456 UC Client, which is ideal for mobile and remote employees, offering VoIP, presence/IM, video conferencing and video/voice call recording. Others leverage IP Phones and the Microsoft Toolbar Plug-ins, making and receiving calls directly from the application.
The results
Cost savings and ROI: Close to $40,000 in savings a year and an ROI of less than 13 months.
TTI was spending between $2,500 and $3,000 a month on outsourced conferencing charges. “Now we can bring this functionality in-house,” says Wentlandt. “We’re also now doing our own moves, adds and changes for additional savings. Based on our calculations, our projected ROI is less than 13 months.”
Inclusive pricing: A transparent cost structure.
“The biggest thing is that SCS is truly an all-in-one package,” says Wentlandt. “There are no hidden costs like with the other vendor we were considering. All users get all features, with no additional core hardware or per-application licenses.”
Improved voice performance: “With our transition to SCS, voice quality is clear and we no longer worry about dropped calls,” says Wentlandt. “The system is working flawlessly.”
The value propositions
Simplicity: With a web-based management system and intuitive self-controlled end-user applications, SCS is so simple to manage and administer that TTI does it all in-house. As Wentlandt puts it, “You don’t need an engineering degree to make changes or get your softphone to work.”
Business-process enhancements: Employees use unified messaging and Find me/Follow me. “Those are fantastic features for our mobile employees, which weren’t available on our previous system,” says Wentlandt. The secure IM and built-in desktop video conferencing capabilities have also been a big hit, helping better connect TTI’s U.S. employees with their colleagues in India.
TTI’s executive assistant loves the ability to record conference calls to more effectively document meetings. The technical writing team is also using this feature to improve their software development process, using their recorded conference calls to help improve release notes.
Also well received are the Automated Call Distribution and hunt-group capabilities, which are much simpler to use than with their previous solution.
True integration: “One thing that we really like about SCS is that all the features and capabilities are integrated,” Wentlandt says. “For example, the webbased video conferencing is built directly into the soft client. They interface very nicely; the functionality is very user friendly.”
Keeping mobile employees connected: “A couple of weeks ago,” Wentlandt says, “one of my guys was driving down the interstate and called me using his Avaya 3456 UC Client with a high-speed cellular connection. It worked flawlessly. Fortunately, his wife was driving.”
Openness: “Pretty much all of the alternatives we looked at were at least partially proprietary, but with SCS we get a pure standards-based solution using SIP — and from a company we trust: Avaya,” says Wentlandt.
The bottom line
“We did our homework,” Wentlandt says, “and the Avaya SCS was simply the best return on our investment: an open standards-based solution with better functionality and an intuitive interface
— all in a cost-effective package.
“With SCS, we’re evolving our communications and saving money in the process.”
Learn more
For more information on how Avaya Intelligent Communications can take your enterprise from where it is to where it needs to be, check out http://www.avayascs.com
Check out http://www.avaya-ipoffice.net for the latest information and videos on Avaya IP Office
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