Mitsubishi saving thousands with IP telephony

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IP telephony (IPT) has saved thousands of pounds and cut management and training time for Mitsubishi Motors UK.

The automobile firm has recently finished rolling out IPT from Vanco across 15 sites over the course of last year, after extending its contract with the virtual network operator in 2006.

Mitsubishi made the move after taking over telecoms for its franchises, using IPT to connect different sites to offer free calls and replace redundant infrastructure. "We wanted to centralise and cut costs," said John Tasker, IT manager for Mitsubishi.

Aside from just connecting different retail shops, the system also links up its sites at Portbury Docks, where imports arrive, and Aston Down, where the company specialises vehicles. "That requires a lot of communications and telephone calls," explained Tasker.

The system is expected to save £5,000 on calls between the sites annually, as well as cutting £30,000 in PBX infrastructure overheads, Tasker said. It will also centralise management for the franchise-based company, allowing for more accurate billing and productivity gains through enhanced reporting, he added.

Furthermore, now that the telecoms system is standard across all sites, staff training is simplified. "When staff move, it's the same stuff," Tasker said. "So administration and training [costs] are also reduced."

Despite the benefits, convincing some at Mitsubishi that IPT was the way forward was no easy task, he explained. "Putting in a new phone system requires a culture change - especially in the head office where we've had a PBX system for 15 years," Tasker said. "But we showed them the new features and started to get buy-in."

The networks are also used for data traffic, but so far the voice system hasn't hurt speeds and more bandwidth hasn't been required. But Tasker noted, despite the ubiquity of email and internet to communicate, voice is still the most important. "People will tolerate data stoppages, but will not tolerate that on voice," he said.

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