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Bob Jane Aims To Cut Phone Bill By A Third |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 16 May 2006 |
One of Australia’s leading tyre fitters expects to achieve an ROI on its new IP Telephony solution in just eight months.
A new Nortel-based IP infrastructure installed at Bob Jane T-Marts could reduce the company’s $2.4 million communication bill by as much as $800,000 as stores and franchisees around the country switch to VoIP.
The business is one of Australia's largest independent tyre and battery retailers with more than 30 company-owned stores plus another 120-plus franchise operations around the country.
Although the company owned sites will be upgraded to use the IP telephony solutions immediately, franchise operations will be offered the upgrade from June this year.
"Towards the end of last year we realised our existing phone system was becoming far too expensive and difficult to manage, so we started looking for a self-maintaining system with the aim of significantly cutting our call costs in the process," said Edward Hore, IT manager, Bob Jane T-Mart.
"Across the group we're spending more than $2.4 million annually on communication costs. With the move to IP telephony we're aiming to save about $800,000 per year, which doesn't factor in the productivity savings from simplified, centralised management and reduced equipment leasing fees. Based on these figures we can expect a return on investment in eight months," he said.
The Bob Jane T-Mart company stores, depots and auxiliary sites will be equipped with Nortel's Business Communication Manager (BCM) 200 and 400 series IP PBXs, with 2000 staff getting either a Nortel 2002, 2004 and 2007 IP handset on their desk.
The process of migrating company stores is expected to be complete by mid-May, while the rollout to franchisees will begin in the first week of June.
The franchise stores will be offered a similar combination of Nortel BCM and IP handsets. They won’t be forced to upgrade their existing phone systems, but Hore expects they will want to.
"We expect 100 per cent take-up of IP telephony from our franchisees,” he said. “Most of them lease their telephone systems, often at a premium price, while the Nortel solution can be owned outright after three years.
"We estimate ROI for a typical franchise store to be anywhere between four and six months, and 13 months at most, so financially it's a no-brainer."
"Nortel's solution is built for redundancy and allows us to quickly set up new stores and locations as our network grows. Should the data network go down for any reason the phones switch back to the PSTN network, which gives us that extra layer of service resiliency,” said Hore.
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