Vox Amvia offers unique personal fax solution to City of Cape Town

Over the past six years, the City of Cape Town has undergone a number of major changes, resulting in the consolidation of their operations from seven separate administrations into one 'unicity'.

This has led to a number of technical developments and streamlining of services, including the reworking of the organisation's entire faxing infrastructure.

The City of Cape Town employs over 12 500 people and has offices across Cape Town. It relies heavily on secure communication channels. Prior to the new system, all faxes were sent via a public PSTN, causing major security concerns. “As a government-based organisation, we deal with highly classified information and as a result it is important that the right people receive their faxes,” says Lindsey Clarke, Senior Professional Officer.

Prior to 2009, the city made use of a legacy fax system, which required the operation of approximately 2 500 fax machines, each with individual fax lines.

“We also had to worry about added maintenance costs, whether it was replacing paper or the actual fax machines, all these factors combined to make the entire process extremely expensive and frustrating,” adds Clarke.

Due to the limitations of the legacy system, before 2009, staff were required to use a general office fax machine. This made the faxing process slow, expensive and inefficient.

“Faxes used to sit in the tray sometimes for days before anyone picked them up, causing data security concerns. Tracing of documentation was also difficult, making corporate compliance virtually impossible to implement,” says Jeff Hendricks, Messaging and Collaboration Manager.

“To send and receive faxes wasted staff time, while e-mailing out documents caused further delays, as the fax needed to be scanned before being distributed,” says Clarke.

“The old system was expensive, outdated and had limited functionality. The City of Cape Town needed a supplier who could offer a functional product, at an affordable rate, providing access to as many personal fax numbers as we required, while ensuring corporate compliance,” adds Clarke.

“Vox Amvia was the only provider able to meet all our requirements,” says Clarke.

The Vox Amvia system gives users access to their own unique fax Direct Inward Dialling (DID) number, allowing faxes to be sent straight to the employee's desktop. This is made possible by Xtenda technology, which provides the client with up to 15 000 potential unique fax numbers per PRI line.

“We have dealt with other suppliers in the past, but they could only provide us with 300 numbers per PRI,” says Hendricks.

“Staff at the City of Cape Town often move between offices. With the old system this was a problem, but this is no longer the case. The Xtenda solution can link to the employee's name as opposed to their department. So no matter where they are, they can pick up their faxes,” adds Hendricks.

“Xtenda also integrates with faxing technology provider RightFax, enabling a full fax audit trail,” says Hendricks.

“When I was looking for a provider, one of my biggest concerns was control over information. The other suppliers all required that we outsource our hosting to them,” says Clarke. “We deal with highly sensitive information, particularly within departments like procurement. For this reason, it is important that we are able to host our own solution, while still receiving 24-hour support if and when required.”

“With electronic faxing now in place, faxes can be sent between departments across the city's entire data network. This new functionality combined with Rightfax technology will also eliminate the need for faxes being sent via the public PSTN leading to major cost savings.

Hendricks says the need to fix or replace fax machines was accommodated in the old system, but this proved costly. This is no longer an issue as everything can now be done via our electronic faxing infrastructure.

According to Clarke, the feedback from the staff around the Vox Amvia faxing solution has been very positive.

“The system is easy to use and makes importing and exporting information simple. It has taken away a number of administration issues of the previous system and as a result, my job has become easier,” says Lunga Felane, Systems Engineer.

“As Project Manager, I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of issues moving from the old legacy system,” says Clarke. “Once everything was approved, it only took one month to implement from start to finish, and best of all, it was well below budget.”

Hendricks says the City of Cape Town has earmarked this project as the start of a larger rollout. “Once all our staff receives access to the product, we would like to distribute the service to our councillors and from there to our rate payers.”