WorkLine Group
A contact center for 100 workstations was launched after only two months, and gave WorkLine the opportunity to adapt their Asterisk telephony system depending upon their needs.
At the end of 2005 the Caldea Company invited me to lead a project. The goal of the project was to build a contact center based on Cisco IPCC Enterprise. The project was coordinated with the immediate participation of Cisco representatives in our region. The solution integrator and supplier was a certified Cisco Systems partner. Since the standard components of IPCC Enterprise could not solve a number of problems typical for scientific-research activity, the integrator suggested using its own products to expand its functionality. By the time I joined the company the project was at the software and equipment delivery stage.
In 2006 the total cost of equipment and delivered services for the contact center project exceeded half a million dollars. The system had still not been put into commercial. The complete breakdown of the ACD server, one of the most expensive and key servers of the group, finally proved that return on investment for this project lied far ahead. The company management took a decision to stop financing the project.
In the beginning of 2007, I became the head of the WorkLine Company's IT department. The IT department was searching for development options for its own research contact center. I was given the freedom of choice at the initial planning stage of the project. We decided in favor of Asterisk for the company telephone network.The main argument for choosing the solution offered by Digium was that the solution gave us the opportunity to correct and adapt the system depending upon our needs. The GPLv2 code and license enabled this flexibility.
A contact center for 100 workstations was launched after only two months since the project was approved and signed. By this time we had created our own ACD system with agent control and intelligent recording of conversations, billing system integration, and dialing. We have also worked out the mechanism for the of creation of questionnaires and their codes, which is crucial for us as a research company. All our products are integrated with the telephone system thanks to the Asterisk source codes available.
During our work we have felt and continue to enjoy the comprehensive support of Digium support specialists. We take part in testing beta versions of products. Any problems and comments are solved in online forums and updates published on the Digium web site. If there is a need to make changes quickly, we are able to amend relevant modules by ourselves by correcting mistakes and/or adding extra functionality.
