IP Telephony

IP Telephony Featured Article

Caja Municipal de Sullana (CMAC Sullana), a leading microlending institution in Peru, recently was forced to confront a common issue for microlenders: prohibitively high telephony operating expenses.

 

The grassroots financial institution operates 10 branches in northern Peru, having expanded rapidly since it first opened in 1986. Because it’s established in rural areas, and it serves a widely dispersed client base, CMAC Sullana was spending a lot of money on phone charges.

 

Further exacerbating the problem was the fact that the institution’s rapid growth resulted in a less-than-efficient phone system tied together by a mix of analog and digital PBXs at the different branches. Managing and maintaining the disparate solutions alone was costing the CMAC Sullana a lot of time and money.

 

So, the institution turned to Mitel (News - Alert) to deploy a new, modern phone system across all its locations—a system capable of improving communications efficiency and lowering its telecom costs.

 

CMAC Sullana’s new phone system from Mitel was installed by Peruvian systems integrator BMP Ingenieros S.A. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the solution is a "communications system," since Mitel's 3300 IP Communications Platform provides not only voice connectivity between the head office and the branches, but also video conferencing, unified messaging and teleworking capabilities.

The new system, which ties together the head office and branches over a wide area network, is helping the lender reduce both administration costs and phone tolls (long-distance and local). The money saved is being used to finance self-employment and other local, economic development projects.

 

CMAC recently operated another branch in Peru’s capitol city, Lima, and has plans to open three more soon. These offices, like the rest of the institution’s network, will be communications-enabled using IP communications solutions from Mitel.

 

 “The implementation was seamless as we simultaneously cutover the new system at our head office in Sullana and at seven branches,” said Agustín Saldarriaga, gerente de tecnologías de la información, CMAC Sullana, in a statement. “We were all the more pleased that Mitel’s solution did not require a replacement of our existing LAN and WAN networks and that we can now manage, maintain and upgrade our entire network from once centralized location.”

 

Jose Lazo, Mitel’s regional manager, southern cone, added that forward-thinking organizations such as CMAC Sullana recognize that investing in modern technology pays off.

 

 “The Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) supports legacy and IP pure communications ‘in the box’ making it ideal for deployment as a network gateway and allowing the progressive integration of voice and data onto a single IP network without a fork lift upgrade,” Lazo said in a statement.

 

To learn more about Mitel’s IP telephony and IP presence solutions, please visit the company’s TMCnet.com channels, IP Telephony and IP Presence.