One of our customers came to me recently to ask about getting a new analogue line connected for their Functions booking team that was close to their existing phone number. My first question was “how many simultaneous calls would you like?” Their answer was “2 to 3 calls at a time”.
I’m sure you can all see immediately that this is not going to work – they would need to have at least 3 lines on top of the 3 lines they already have for their Adventures booking team but in 2 separate hunt groups which means that each hunt group can only take a maximum of 3 calls which is inefficient if a 4th caller gets busy while the other 3 lines are unused.
As the customer was referred to us by an Optus channel partner and currently have Direct Lines, my suggestion was to move to a Primary Rate connection to give them additional logical channels that can be shared amongst both Functions and Adventures. The BCM50 phone system was originally installed with capacity for 8 analogue lines so it has an expansion chassis with a GATM 4 analogue trunk module. This can easily (and quite cheaply) be swapped for a refurbished Digital Trunk Module to accommodate the Multiline. The BCM50 would require an expensive license to accommodate a VoIP trunk and it was never intended to connect a VoIP trunk to the network.
This particular BCM50 was installed with bundled licenses such as Fax Suite, Unified Messaging and plenty of voice mail seats so I recommended the fax number be migrated to the Multiline as well, so, using Fax Suite and Unified Messaging, any incoming faxes can be scanned and delivered as email. This is a feature my legal customers love on their BCM’s.
So the main benefits will be:
- More efficient utilisation of lines
- Full control of outgoing Caller ID
- The ability to call forward externally
- Never busy fax and scan to email
- Expansion up to 30 channels if required and the Functions Booking office evolves into a call centre.
The customer is also expanding to an offsite catering facility so there is the option to have remote extensions there too. The BCM range despite being long superseded are still providing good service with the features and facilites required by many customers.
ICS Technologies, based in Brisbane, Australia maintains a number of BCM50, BCM200, BCM400 and BCM450 systems across the country.
