Toyota South Africa reduces monthly call costs by converging mobile and then fixed-line calling with Voice over IS solution  With an existing cellular least cost routing environment in place, Toyota South Africa was no stranger to how technology can assist companies to reduce some of their more traditional costs.  The challenge was however, that the motor manufacturer’s cellular least cost routing environment spanned relationships with three separate suppliers, creating additional management and administration overheads for the company’s IT team, when it should have been doing the exact opposite.

 

The company  realised it had to consolidate its requirements under a single partner if it was to move its environment to the next level and hopefully begin driving its overall cost of telephony down even further.  With this in mind, in June of 2007 the company put a request for proposal (RFP) document out into the market and went in search of a partner that could not only handle all of its current requirements, but give it the possibility of reducing the costs even further over the coming years.

 

“By and large, what we were proposed with by a number of different applicants was the same type of solution as we had before – a ‘premicell’ plugged into our PABX allowing our outbound cellular traffic to be carried across the cellular networks, as opposed to it going out over the existing PSTN’s infrastructure and costing us a fortune,” explains Tony Benschop, Senior Manager IT Infrastructure – Toyota South Africa, Durban Operations. “The only company that proposed something different was Internet Solutions (IS),” Benschop continues.  Benschop says that IS’ solution suggested the use of VoIP and would utilise the service provider’s nationwide IP backbone and break-out onto the appropriate cellular network as needed.

 

This had the dual benefit of offering the lowest possible call rate from a single provider, with the addition of redundancy  – allowing Toyota to utilise another cellular network provider’s network if the network they would ideally have used became over capacitated or unstable.  “The latter,” Benschop adds, “was a real boon, since it removed some of the limitations we were previously forced to contend with.”  “The additional functionality and our ability to outsource our need for cheaper cellular calling to a single party that would essentially deliver a simple service to us was by far the most valuable aspect of Internet Solutions’ proposal,” he says.

 

Benschop says that the project was kicked off in the beginning of 2008.  “Internet Solutions handled everything,” he explains, “from ordering the lines required to connect our Durban office to its closest point of presence, to monitoring the installation process, physically installing all of the hardware required and cutting us over to their backbone.”  Benschop says that although things weren’t perfect in the initial stages of the project – particularly when it came to the voice quality of the solution – his company felt that IS went the extra mile to have any issues resolved speedily.

 

At that stage, Benschop says Toyota was using in the region of 70 000 minutes of call traffic per month (enough for roughly 700 users) and saving in the region of R90 000 over what a standard landline environment through the PSTN would cost.  “The solution from IS was 39% more cost effective than a traditional landline only-based solution based on the previous PSTN solution,” Benschop says.  “And even though we would have experienced similar savings if we were using any other cellular least cost routing solution, the fact that this was a completely outsourced service  and one that required zero additional time or effort from our IT department, meant we were extremely satisfied,” he says.

 

With the cellular side of the equation properly bedded down, Toyota on IS’ recommendation started looking at other areas it could affect cost savings.  “Six months after the initial solution had been functioning to our satisfaction, we began to investigate expanding the VoIS solution to include our national and international calls and six months after that, using it for our local call traffic,” he says.  With all of its outbound calling now routed through IS’ backbone, Toyota’s spend with IS has increased to 115 000 minutes per month and each month gives the company a saving of R105 000 over the conventional PSTN infrastructure (close to R1.3m of savings over the course of a year).

 

“The solution has more than paid for itself in that it has maintained a healthy savings figure since its installation a year ago – and this has been with less involvement and time spent on this issue from Toyota’s IT management team,” Benschop says.  “From our perspective, the solution achieved instant returns for us, bringing us substantial cost savings and a huge reduction in administration overhead. And the best part is, it cost us nothing,” he chuckles.

 

“All of the equipment, maintenance and administration work is done by IS – we simply pay for the number of minutes we consume monthly,” he says.  “Overall, we’ve been extremely satisfied with the work carried out by IS and remain confident that the company will continue to deliver us cost savings in line with those we’ve been experiencing up until now, well into the coming years,” he concludes.

TAMMY DU PREEZ Communications Manager   Tel: 087 365 7768   Tel: +27 (11) 575 7768   Fax: +27 (11) 576 7768