Zetafax
Case study: KMI Plus
Construction company saves time money and money with Zetafax FoIP
“The speed of the solution means that faxes are sent and received instantly rather than having to wait at fax machines for the document to send, or wait for the fax to arrive in people's in-trays. Faxes are now routed directly to the right person, speeding up the process and ensuring that nothing gets lost.”
Ian Johnson, IT Manager, KMI Plus..
Headquartered in Wigan, Greater Manchester, and with around 500 employees in the UK, KMI Plus is a joint-venture between Kier Group PLC, J Murphy & Sons and Interserve Project Services Ltd, working in partnership to meet the current demands of the water industry. In 2009, KMI Plus secured their third consecutive five year contract with United Utilities, valued at approximately £400m. This means that KMI Plus will continue to deliver detailed design, construction and final commissioning services on its investment programme, to improve the water and wastewater networks in the north of its operating region until 2015.
The challenge
With between 15 and 60 construction sites across the UK communications across sites could be fragmented and costly, and KMI Plus had made the decision to move to a Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone system to help ease these issues. However, with central fax machines at head office, and each individual construction site needing to receive documents such as invoices and delivery notes, KMI Plus also wanted to find a Fax over IP (FoIP) solution that would be resilient across the whole infrastructure, rather than relying on individual fax machines at each location.
"Each time we opened a new construction site, we would need to install a fax machine with an individual fax number for the site," explains Ian Johnson, IT Manager at KMI Plus. "Aside from the time and cost arranging this for each site, sending and receiving faxes on an analogue fax machine was a slow process, and the machines would break down left, right and centre. With the additional cost of paper and consumables for each site, all of this resulted in a highly inefficient solution."
The requirement
As the move to a VoIP telephone system had driven the investigation into FoIP, the main requirement for the fax solution was that it integrated seamlessly with their IP enabled Avaya Communication Manager. KMI Plus also wanted to ensure that faxes could be routed directly to the right person, allowing the fax to be actioned swiftly.
With each construction site requiring their own individual fax number, the set up and routing of fax numbers to these sites also needed to be fast and easy, allowing the full communications infrastructure to be up and running as quickly as possible.
The solution: Zetafax
KMI Plus currently has around 50 users of Zetafax, primarily used by the accounts, plant and stores departments, and each individual construction site. The Zetafax FoIP Connector then allows the Zetafax server to be connected directly to the Avaya Communication Manager, allowing the IP phone system to be used directly for faxing to save the cost of installing separate phone lines for use by the fax server.
KMI Plus also purchased the Zetafax SMS Gateway which, once implemented, will allow text messages to be sent to mobile devices directly from the desktop.
The benefits
By deploying Zetafax, KMI Plus has been able to replace around 60 fax machines at the headquarters in Wigan, and construction sites around the UK. This has led to considerable cost savings in terms of paper and consumables, and also time taken sending faxes and having to repair the machines if they broke down. Initial estimates suggest that these savings will be in the region of £200 per month.
The solution has also led to efficiency gains, as Johnson explains: "The speed of the solution means that faxes are sent and received instantly rather than having to wait at fax machines for the document to send, or wait for the fax to arrive in people's in-trays. Faxes are now routed directly to the right person, speeding up the process and ensuring that nothing gets lost."
Following implementation of the VoIP telephone system, KMI Plus also looked to server virtualization to further help reduce costs and ease administration. Using VMware Vsphere with a Netapp SAN back-end, KMI Plus has been able to cut down the number of servers from 25 to 3. Using the FoIP Connector has allowed the Zetafax server to be included in this virtualization project, allowing faxes to be transmitted using the IP connection rather than physical hardware.
"Equisys has been an excellent company to work with on this project, with technical support that really knows what they're talking about," concludes Johnson. "The Zetafax software has integrated easily with our VoIP system, as well as our virtualization project. This, coupled with the functionality and flexibility of the software which allows us to quickly deploy fax at remote sites, has made Zetafax the perfect solution to meet our needs."
Download the KMI Plus Case Study.
What next?
- View our Zetafax product videos
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- Download Zetafax documentation
- Find out how to buy Zetafax fax software