THE NECESSITY OF INTEGRATING AN EVOLVED COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

Located in Laval, Quebec, Transport Cotnoir has specialized for half a century in the delivery of new furniture and residential short and long distance moving. The company employs some 100 people on the road and generates $8 million in revenues annually. A major part of its operations takes place in a 200,000 square foot building and in the heart of its three huge warehouses that serve as a mini distribution centre.

When the management of Transport Cotnoir contacted Bell their objective was to improve communications in the company's buildings: “Our system had become obsolete” explains company President, Gilbert Cotnoir. “We wanted more advanced facilities including such features as a voice-response system that would enable us to communicate more efficiently with our planners in the warehouses—in other words by means other than cell phone, which was becoming very expensive.”

TAILOR-MADE SOLUTIONS, CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONAL SAVINGS

After carefully studying the situation, Bell's experts proposed a cutting-edge solution that was not only adapted to the client's needs, but offered many other advantages as well… and was affordable because Bell established a flexible budget for Cotnoir spread over five years.

Deployment of the BCM system along with a LAN connected by fibre-optic cable will soon enable Transport Cotnoir to use a bar-code management system in its warehouses, marking the start of a new era for the company. “We anticipate this system will save us the equivalent of two people per shift,” notes Mr. Cotnoir. “Being able to read the bar codes on our suppliers' goods will eliminate several manual operations that used to be necessary when unloading the trucks at night, thereby speeding up stock movement considerably.”

AN OVERALL IMPROVEMENT IN COMMUNICATIONS

The new solution harmonizes the telecommunications system across all of Transport Cotnoir's buildings. The company is also thrilled with this solution for several other reasons, besides the fact that it incorporates the latest technologies. Mr. Cotnoir lists a few examples: “We were able to keep our old telephone sets, communications between the warehouses have improved and accelerated, our receptionist has been freed up to work on other administrative tasks, the number of messages waiting has gone down, and the long distance charges generated mainly by the high volume of calls between Laval and the South Shore have been reduced.”

EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE

The client is also very pleased about having a single point of contact: “It's so much simpler this way, and we've been impressed by the flawless organization of the project, thorough consultation process, extensive explanations and quality training.”

As for implementation delays, “let's just say that the Bell team was ready long before we were,” explains Gilbert Cotnoir with a laugh.