atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Recommendation for PBX

Hello all,

I'm currently looking to recommend a purchase for a pbx, user count will start with 200 and 150 being call center agents. I have researched many PBX systems and it seems as most enterprise solutions are Nortel, Toshiba and Avaya. My question is are IP based phone systems reliable enough to compete against these bigger legacy pbx systems? Also what are your opinions on Shortel? I currently have 400-450 user setup on our Toshiba CTX 670 system. Could I interface with another IP based pbx? Any help is appreciated.

Did you try doing a search on this site? There have been many similar posts over the years. You might get some answers faster that way. Just a thought. There is a search button at the top of the page, search this catagory this is where they have mostly been. But you could search in each product catagory that you mention too.
Mark

Siemens makes a good ACD system i think it's called a 4000 and as far as a IP call center...I would not be in favor of that. I would think about how many times your network goes down or is unavailable for any reason and you have answered your question. Also look into the after cost of doing business past the initial installation. IP solutions could get costly

Thx for info 1grumpy.

Since you are dealing with call center issues as well as a relatively large PBX deployment, I would make sure the vendors you are considering, most of all, have the expertise to take care of you once the system is in place. Weather it be an IP based system or traditional PBX, you need to be able to go see several systems that are up and running successfully in your imediate area. A good many systems can do what you want but the local vendor might have no experience even though he can provide the product and you don't want to be a guinipig.

I lost a very large Samsung account to Cisco IP based on one thing, the amount of agents that could be in a group. Cisco is very expensive to maintain with licenses, phones, etc. but has the capability of handling large groups an sometimes that is the trick.

As you have that much Toshiba now, I would see what the Toshiba dealer could do first. It may be possible that not everyone in your company has to be able to make an intercom call directly to others and there are inventive ways to link them.

It could be that you could use one CTX for a major part of the incoming traffic and another CTX for admin traffic.

Come up with a list of what you need in the way of groups of people and what equipment you have now. I could look at that and see what makes common sense. It could be that you do inexpensive IP phones for the ACD and use the Toshiba for the rest.

Without a real list of what you need and what you have we are just kissing in the dark with a piece of glass between us.