Infrastructure improvements

For larger firms, IT services can provide a critical boost for mission-critical systems. Joho Technology partners with senior decision makers to align IT services and planning to support and enhance a firm’s core competitive offering. Our track record of delivering high-performance, high-availability systems means your business benefits from greater productivity and reduced downtime. What’s more, our strategic vision allows us to suggest, and implement, solutions that drive down operational costs over time.

Coping with rapid growth

Client needs: Growing rapidly with its new entity in Japan, this health and beauty products marketing organization was having difficulties scaling its technology to meet the increasing demand for its products. Their PC-based PBX was failing on a regular basis and would be unavailable, essentially stopping all phone traffic in or out of their call center. Their network, which consisted of two separate Windows NT domains, was inherently unstable. When it failed, all incoming fax orders were unable to be processed and staff were idled.

Solution: Joho Technology engineers stabilized the network and developed a detailed analysis of the system. Joho Technology consultants then worked with the US headquarters to recommend rebuilding critical servers, replacing the PBX and phone sets with Nortel equipment, implementing a new Cisco VLAN, and redesigning the wide area network to reduce carrier charges. Three redundant fiber optic lines were laid in to replace an overworked system of 60 individual phone lines with fax modems. An advanced OCR system was implemented to automate reception and processing of fax orders.

Results: Robust system design produced significant downtime reduction. The volume of work accomplished (order processing and registration processing combined) increased by 46.5% over the six month period following the new enhancements, while personnel man-hours increased by only 4.6%. Taken together, the call center demonstrated increased productivity of 40.1%.