ACS selects XMediusFAX™ SP for speed and reliability in handling heavy fax load

The Client

Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) is a premier provider of diversified business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology outsourcing (ITO) solutions to commercial and government clients worldwide. Based in Dallas, Texas, ACS is a FORTUNE 500 company of more than 63,000 people supporting client operations reaching more than 100 countries.

The Challenge

ACS processes medical insurance and workers’ compensation claims for numerous companies. For two of these healthcare clients, ACS receives over 15,000 faxes a day. As the faxes are received, they are immediately routed for downstream data entry by a custom workflow solution. The required turnaround time from fax receipt to data entry output is small – just two hours, as dictated by a Service Level Agreement (SLA). As these faxes are critical to ACS’ clients, smooth, timely fax handling is paramount.

ACS had another vendor’s fax product in place, but as volumes increased it repeatedly failed, causing communications bottlenecks, flooding the clients’ customer help desk, and tying up managers and administrators who were constantly required to troubleshoot fax-processing issues. An analysis showed that only 93% of faxes succeeded. In other words, more than 1,000 incoming faxes a day failed, causing significant technical and workflow problems. Client satisfaction was suffering and ACS knew that it had to act fast.

ACS decided to upgrade to a new fax solution that would:

• Substantially increase the fax success rate and client satisfaction, while reducing the amount of administration time required to manage the fax process
• Eliminate stretched images, locked fax lines, busy signals, failed faxes and hung servers
• Be boardless (i.e., not require expensive fax boards)
• Provide a cost-effective T.38 Fax over IP (FoIP) solution to integrate with its Cisco VoIP environment
• Be redundant (i.e., not have any single points of failure)

The Solution

During the evaluation phase, ACS evaluated a number of other products, but eventually rejected them because of architecture-incompatibility, redundancy, disaster recovery and success-rate issues. ACS quickly chose Sagem-Interstar’s XMediusFAX SP multi-tenant T.38 FoIP solution because it satisfied all major requirements, supports industry-standard technologies such as Windows and SQL, and features advanced reporting capabilities. During the presales period, ACS was very impressed with Sagem-Interstar’s sales team, which Jason Singleton, Regional IT Manager, said “demonstrated an outstanding understanding of ACS’ business and technical needs.”

According to Singleton, “the XMediusFAX implementation was very easy – clean and quick.” The multi-tenant and boardless XMediusFAX SP at ACS resides on multiple, redundant servers and processes faxes over 69 channels in real time. As promised, the Cisco Compatible XMediusFAX integrated seamlessly with ACS’ Cisco IP Telephony platform, leveraging its VoIP investment.

Results and Benefits

ACS is delighted with the software-only XMediusFAX SP, which has boosted productivity enormously, with an almost perfect success ratio for incoming faxes. Singleton enthuses “Our clients are much more satisfied with the XMediusFAX solution than with the previous fax product. Service and support from Sagem-Interstar have been phenomenal – truly a night-and-day difference when compared to the other fax vendor. They’re very flexible and have provided the highest level of attention to every request.”

Another important XMediusFAX benefit for ACS is the quality of the fax image, which Singleton declares “is great!” This is crucial for efficient downstream processing: an ultra-clear image means fewer operator errors, which in turn helps ensure that ACS meets its SLA quality terms. The sharp image is also critical to ACS clients when viewing the fax images directly using ACS’ long-term Stored Image Retrieval system.

Since its fax problems are in the past, ACS is growing its outsourced fax business, with XMediusFAX as a cornerstone of upcoming offerings. Due to its robustness, full-feature set and powerful multi-tenant capabilities, XMediusFAX SP provides ACS with a substantial competitive advantage for attracting, managing, and satisfying new clients.

So once again the field-proven XMediusFAX – installed at thousands of sites worldwide – demonstrates how it can increase productivity, reduce expenses, and open the door to future business opportunities.