Pharmacists Mutual Insurance selects Interactive Intelligence's CIC to support employees

Apr 20 2010

Pharmacists Mutual Insurance Company has selected the Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ) all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center^™ (CIC), to support its on-site and branch office employees.

“Administering it required logging in to a number of separate applications - we had one application for our automatic call distributor, one for voice, another for our phones, and so on.”

CIC was sold by Interactive Intelligence reseller, Spanlink Communications (www.spanlink.com). Spanlink will also provide ongoing support of the system.

Pharmacists Mutual, a provider of insurance products and financial services to pharmacists, pharmacies and associated businesses, began looking for a new communications system following the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, according to the company's chief technology officer, Barrie Parker.

"The swine flu outbreak prompted us to reevaluate our disaster recovery plans," Parker said. "Providing financial peace of mind for our 46,000-plus customers is our number-one priority and it became evident that if an outbreak was to occur within our organization, our current phone system would limit us."

Pharmacists Mutual selected the Interactive Intelligence software because of its flexibility, rich feature-set and ease-of-use, according to the company's network administration manager, Brian Stamper.

"Our previous phone system was largely outdated, difficult to administer, and didn't meet our redundancy or flexibility needs," Stamper said. "Administering it required logging in to a number of separate applications - we had one application for our automatic call distributor, one for voice, another for our phones, and so on."

Pharmacists Mutual evaluated an upgrade to its existing system and reviewed communications solutions from four other vendors in a request-for-proposal before deciding on CIC.

"After we met with Spanlink and reviewed the Interactive Intelligence CIC system we were impressed by the amount of out-of-the-box functionality it offered," Stamper said. "In addition to running on a single, all-in-one platform, a fully redundant CIC system was a more cost-effective purchase than several of the competitive products we evaluated."

When the implementation is complete, the Interactive Intelligence software suite will support several hundred Pharmacists Mutual employees, about 15 percent of whom work remotely from branch offices. The initial deployment will enable advanced communications functionality, including unified messaging, multichannel recording, and real-time monitoring and reporting.

"We're excited about CIC and anticipate a number of benefits for our employees and customers," Stamper said. "In addition to having a strong disaster recovery plan in place, we'll have a single point of administration and be able to eliminate our costly branch office phone plans."

Pharmacists Mutual plans to complete the first phase of deployment by the end of Q2 2010.