Sidebar: Five's The Charm At Professional Career Development Institute

BY MICHAEL DURANCE

With more than 40,000 graduates, Atlanta-based Professional Career Development Institute (PCDI) is one of the top college correspondence schools in the country. PCDI has educational programs ranging from medical and auto mechanics to associate of arts degrees and high school diplomas, helping its students reach their academic and career goals while giving them the flexibility of studying remotely from anywhere in the world. The institute relies on its Toshiba Strata CTX670 business communication system to handle the thousands of calls it receives from current and potential students each week.

�Professional Career Development Institute has been growing by leaps and bounds every year,� said Mike Rutsky, director of operations for the school, which currently boasts more than 150,000 students. �With more and more people returning to school to start new careers or further themselves in their current careers, we�ve seen our enrollments jump by more than 25 percent in the last four years.�

As its attendance grew, so did PCDI�s telecommunication needs. In fact, the Institute�s telephone system grew from just 25 extensions with its first Toshiba system to more than 250 extensions today on its new Toshiba Strata CTX system, according to Rutsky. A Toshiba user for more than 15 years, PCDI worked with Authorized Toshiba Dealer ALT Communications, also based in Atlanta, to upgrade its existing Toshiba Strata DK424i to the Toshiba Strata CTX670 system.

ALT Communications CEO Larry Brown said, �With 3,500 to 5,000 calls coming into PCDI every day, the Institute needed a dependable system that would provide reliable call handling for its nearly 100 operators. We recommended Toshiba because its products are absolutely the best choice when it comes to 24/7 reliability and durability.� Rutsky added, �Since our telephones are our primary link to new and existing students, it�s imperative that we have a reliable system, and that�s why we chose Toshiba.�

In fact, PCDI�s management team has been so pleased with the reliability and migratability of its Toshiba systems that the Strata CTX670 is the fifth Toshiba system they�ve purchased. They first started with a Strata DK96 in the mid-1980s, moving to a Perception in the late 1980s. As the Institute grew, they upgraded to a Strata DK280 before moving to the DK424i in the mid-1990s. Continued growth spurred their decision to migrate to the Strata CTX670.

One of the benefits of PCDI�s upgrade of its existing Toshiba Strata DK424i system to the larger-capacity, more powerful Toshiba Strata CTX670 is that the institute was able to keep all of its existing telephone handsets and many of the interface system boards, which added to the cost savings.

Brown estimates that the migration would have cost PCDI 300-400 percent more to buy a completely new telephone system. He said, �Toshiba�s legendary migration path really paid off for PCDI. They kept much of their existing equipment, which provided them with a tremendous cost savings while affording them all the benefits of moving to the more sophisticated system.�

ALT Communications was also able to migrate PCDI�s existing Toshiba Stratagy Enterprise Server (Stratagy ES) voice processing system for use with its new Toshiba Strata CTX670. Originally used with its previous Toshiba Strata DK system, the Stratagy ES is the most powerful voice processing solution available from Toshiba and was designed for backward and forward migratability. Brown said, �Being able to keep the Stratagy ES system saved PCDI the cost of a new voice processing solution, which would have been thousands of dollars.�

In addition to cost savings, Rutsky estimates that the Toshiba Strata CTX system has improved productivity at PCDI by more than 50 percent. �With the Strata CTX, everything just flows better. From managing our incoming call capability to routing calls to our ACD groups, we can now better plan our staffing needs. In addition, being able to reduce our queue times also provides us with a substantial cost savings in our long-distance charges.�

With its 50 percent increase in productivity, a dramatic increase in overall power and capacity, and cost savings in long-distance and migration path of more than 300 percent over buying a new system, Toshiba has earned high marks at PCDI. Rutsky said, �You could definitely say that Toshiba is at the top of the class here at Professional Career Development Institute.�

Michael Durance is vice president and general manager of Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division. Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division is a leading provider of business communication systems for small- to medium-sized enterprises. Based in Irvine, CA, Toshiba TSD markets its Strata CTX, Strata DK, Strata CS and Stratagy systems through its network of more than 500 authorized dealers.