Corporate

With his management agency, Alex Kossenberg is responsible for the supporting and facilitating services for ASKO: Amsterdamse Stichting voor Katholiek, Protestants-Christelijk en Interconfessioneel Onderwijs. (Amsterdam Foundation for Catholic, Protestant Christian and Interdenominational education). It is the largest organisation for primary Catholic / Ecumenical education in Amsterdam and surrounding areas. Approximately 900 professionals are committed to teaching almost 10,000 students at 300 primary schools on a daily basis.

"We have actively communicated regarding this telephony solution. However, the schools are individually responsible for their own budget. It is only justifiable to invest in VoIP when something is wrong with the current telephone system. There is cause to switch to a new system when the old system starts showing shortcomings, maintenance costs need to be made or when there are problems with the reach within the building. Then we advise to switch to a cloud telephone system. The investment will be recovered within a foreseeable time period, and we think the resulting professionalisation is particularly important. A school is a small organisation, it does not look good if the phones are not answered. Therefore it would be better to set up a call plan enabling callers to be helped properly. And with a selection menu we will be able to forward the phone calls properly, for example, we can split the calls for nursery school, school etc.

Switching to gnTel will be taken care of by our service partner, Wifi Network Solutions from Alkmaar. They will draw up a quotation, taking the wishes of the school concerned into account, and will subsequently roll-out the plan on location. If there are any further questions or desires afterwards, the school can arrange this directly with the service partner. We no longer have to worry about it. I think that all our locations will have switched within a few years."

Ernie Beek is IT and network manager at TASS International in Rijswijk. The company also has an office in Helmond (the Netherlands) and in Germany, as well as offices further afield in: South Korea, Japan, China, Australia and Turkey. "We make software for the automotive industry, for example to simulate accidents in order to test the durability of materials, for example seat belts, helmets, children's car seats. We are a company with mainly business-to-business contacts and we employ approximately 200 employees."

TASS International used to have its own on-site telephone system. The quality of the internet in regards to bandwidth was not as good as it is now, so the company chose for security. The company could already benefit from the competitive call rates with gnTel's SIP-trunk channels. Only later, approximately 3 years ago, they switched to hosted VoIP from gnTel. The quality of the internet connection has as a result increased dramatically, so it works excellently. It can actually be compared to ISDN quality.

With a team of four, gnTel ensured that the phones were set up at TASS that same day. On-site, they set up everything manually, enabling the employees to call via gnTel. That would be a lot easier to do now with Auto Provisioning. Your service partner can set up all of the accounts and phones in advance and on the day that your organisation makes the transfer it can be arranged with just a few clicks of the button.

Therefore, a large roll-out is not a problem for gnTel. It is not surprising that a multinational organisation such as Tass International with hundreds of employees has already been a satisfied customer for eight years.

The stability of our switchboard was also disappointing. It became all too fragile. Sometimes, we had a technical problem every week, and finally we had had enough. Especially time-consuming was the process of restarting after a stoppage.”

‘VKG’ stands for Van Kampen Groep. Located in the town of Hoorn, it is a full-service provider for financial consultants throughout the Netherlands. And these consultants of course sometimes ‘ ring home’ – some 700 times per day, to be exact. This calls for an intelligent solution. “Our consultants notice no change at all,” explains Sabrina Nocera. None at all? “Well, we had a few minutes of downtime during the conversion, and that was it. We and our consultants are incredibly happy with our brand-new switchboard in the cloud, because of the constant reachability it provides.

”Our service partner, Rison, completed implementation in no-time. Naturally, a few steps had been necessary. First: all existing phones had to be switched over. “Provisioning for the conversion of the existing phones was the big challenge,“ explains Erik Brokkaar of gnTel. “But the collaboration between our service partner, Rison, the customer, VKG, and ourselves was optimal, and that was key.

”Ron de Bruin (Rison): “The customer was highly satisfied about our delivery. Not so surprising, in view of how quickly it went. We threw ourselves into the project until it was completed – with a very happy customer as a result.”

“By means of a special distribution key, our new software automatically distributes our telecommunications equally across all active connections,” Sabrina Nocera explains. “That’ s a nice by-product: all our consultants get the same number of ‘ turns.’ We have no files, queues or interchanges any more on the line.

“We rent out to everyone, from first-time tenants to families and senior citizens. As well as students, expats and people with a residence permit. On the other hand, the range of clients we work for is just as broad. They vary from housing associations, estate agents, investors and project developers to public institutions, such as nursing homes, school managements and municipalities. Very diverse, and we have grown considerably in the past years. However, we still do not need a switchboard operator!

The calls used to be forwarded to a mobile number. Now we organise everything via gnTel's customer management tool, which really works well. Extra functionalities have also been added in the past years. For example, we now work with a CRM connection, which automatically correctly routes a caller who is already in our database or the caller receives an appropriate message.

And if we need something special to be done for a special project,customisation is also possible. For example, we assigned a special number for a large project with 217 apartments and set up the correct routing with a voice computer. That is the nice thing about gnTel, they are happy to think along with you and always come up with a fitting solution."

Yvo Eckhart of installation firm Knipmeijer & Blok is highly enthusiastic about gnTel. The company has dozens of technicians working for it in shifts, providing installation and maintenance for renovation tasks, new construction and care institutions.

“My.gntel is a clear and logical management environment with numerous functionalities. The support line is also excellent – nice to know, if you need it. We enjoyed our gnTel training course. And if customers have special needs, the gnTel team are always the perfect sounding board for finding the best solution. And it’ s the personal contact that keeps the collaboration so smooth and easy – and always friendly and professional.

“An example of a nice customer solution is having automatic links to the appropriate contact persons on the basis of employee tasks. We use it for our repair technicians. And if no one picks up fast enough, your call is automatically re-directed to the ‘ rear guard.’ That way, our customers always get the right person on the telephone in the event of a technical problem, since problems are annoying enough on their own."

This functionality works by linking your calling plan to Google Calendar. We also implement it for schools, so that calls before and after school hours or during breaks can be redirected. For many other customers, this has been a super-convenient solution (for example, the night service at GPs’ surgeries). So be sure to discuss all your needs with your gnTel service partner – often there are more options than you think!