Would 4 or 8 ports work best?

[rconn]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for some opinions based on your experience. I have customer upgrading to a MICS and CallPilot. 6 lines and currently using 17 extensions but is going to at least 24 extensions now and more later. They want all calls answered by the AA and most employees will have a mailbox. As an architect firm they do not have a lot of inbound calls daily (they estimate 70 calls). There will be little use of message notification. I am thinking 4 ports would likely cover them (CP100), but they are close to needing a CP150 for the number of ports. As a new customer I do not have a history with them. Cost is a concern and at this time but they want this to be a 3 to 5 year solution for the voicemail.


Thank you in advance for your thoughts,

Rob

 

[pikk]

Hi Rob

In my opinion, I would go with the 150. If this is a 3-5 year plan, it would make more sense to install the 8 ports right away and plan for the future. On top of that you get 5 times the amount of storage and the 150 is expandable to 200 mailboxes as opposed to only 40 with the 100. I don't believe the cost difference is that great but I could be wrong. It's been a while since I looked into one of these. Anyway, I guess compare it to buying just a "basic" pc and upgrading a year down the road. I always say..."Get as much as you can for the money you want to spend." But that's just my opinion.

Hope this helps.

Pikk

 

[pikk]

I was mistaken...

I guess the difference in cost for the 100 and 150 are quite large. I just checked it out and you're looking at about 800 to a 1000 difference.

P

 

[bkrike]

Rconn: Your reasoning is sound, and I agree with your current solution. The question is are they going to have many more lines answered by AA in the future. It just depends on how large they think they will grow in terms of incoming lines.

 

[rconn]

They will look at adding 1 to 2 more lines but that would be just to add outbound capacity. It is about $1000.00 difference. Because they are using a Flash Mini now with 2 ports, they do see problems now. The problems usally appear after a meeting and everyone is into the voicemail after the meeting. They realize this may still happen on a 4 port at times but may live with it. I would like to see an 8 port only because they do not like to answer the lines manually and do rely on the VM to handle calls. It will be up to them to decide. I can only arm them with enough information. I don't think a limit of 40 mailboxes will cause them any problem.

Rob

 

[silver987]

If money is an issue (and it normally is) go with the cp100 4 channel, that will let two internal and 2 external users at once. Just let them know that down the road it may not fit there needs.
So.........pay me now or pay me later...

 

[paul144]

It would be foolish to spend money on something that they know may cause problems now and will certainly cause problems in the future.
I would try to convince them to spend the money now on the extra ports.

 

[telemarv]

IMHP Offer them both solutions, but recommend the 150.

 

[rhowlett]

Go with what Nortel recommends. They sell the 150 with the MICS in a bundle package fora reason. It makes more sense.

Why have them pay more money down the road to upgrade the CP100 to a CP150! Pay for it naw and just buy the mailbox keycodes as they grow. Plus they can use the Call Center feature if they have some use for it later.