Vendor Spotlight: Startel Corporation

Technology and Solutions Provider for Healthcare Call Centers

Startel Corporation was founded in March 1980 and is a leading provider of solutions for medical, healthcare, and university communications.  Startel has been providing comprehensive communications solutions since its inception and continues to deliver reliable and flexible systems and applications.  Customers using Startel’s solutions are able to increase customer satisfaction levels, manage human resources more effectively, reduce training costs, increase employee productivity, and maximize their return on investment (ROI) by taking advantage of the functionality provided by the system.  In addition to a powerful system, Startel provides world-class training, custom software development, consulting services, implementation, and support.

Startel’s Soft Switch Solution:

• Leading Edge: The open architecture of Startel’s Soft Switch ensures that the system will always be up-to-date with all new industry features, functionality, and will support all current trunking options, including SIP, as well as new protocols that may be introduced to the market in the future.

• Reliability: Minimal hardware requirements provide for less potential failure points, while the software allows for full system redundancy and automated failover.

• Scalability: Utilizing distributed processing, the system can be scaled to handle virtually any call volume.  Processing power can be easily increased using load balancing

• Mobility: One server connected to the LAN, with either SIP or PSTN trunking, provides telephony to agents throughout the world and supports a full range of IP phones and free soft phones.  An agent simply connects via an established VPN gateway.

• Flexibility: Support is provided for multiple hardware configurations, as well as both TDM and SIP trunking.  It utilizes industry standard server class CPUs and supports a wide variety of interface cards for PSTN connectivity, such as FXS/FXO and PRI/BRI.

• ROI: Users can increase their return on investment by utilizing minimal hardware and via hardware flexibility, allowing for smaller investments in hardware and the ability to easily upgrade hardware over time for better efficiency and lower costs.

• Maintenance: Startel provides remote diagnosis and soft fixes.  The use of load balancing allows for the performance of standard maintenance without taking the system offline.

• User-Friendly Configuration: A GUI (graphical user interface) allows for remote access for configuration and maintenance.  

• Single Point of Access: All setup and configuration and be handled through a signal access point.

• Rapid Application Development (RAD): Applications can easily be added due to a full software environment with no hardware modifications.

• Fully Integrated to the Startel CMC System: The Soft Switch provides full computer telephony integration (CTI) to all Startel CMC functionality.

SMS (Short Message Service): SMS is functionally synonymous with “texting” or “text messaging.”  The popularity of SMS has grown dramatically over the last several years, and it is estimated that 75% of cell phone users send text messages daily.  Utilized initially as a consumer application, the proliferation of SMS as an alternative business communication has increased dramatically over the last 12 months and is becoming an essential part of the fully integrated business communications platform utilized by call centers worldwide. 

Startel is pleased to offer customers with a robust, reliable, low cost, easily implemented/maintained, and fully integrated service.  Startel’s SMS service is a pure software solution, the reliability is high, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) is greatly reduced over the SMS solutions.  Startel offers two versions of SMS service: one fully integrated into the Startel CMC platform and the other for customers utilizing other call center solutions. 

“We’re excited at the potential of Startel’s SMS Service to transform message delivery.  SMS will continue to increase as a communication channel.  We want to bring our clients innovative solutions that leverage our Startel CMC’s service offerings,” stated Christopher Bell, president of MedCom Professional Services, Inc., located in Levittown, PA.  Patty Moreno, systems manager for Alert Answering Service located in Ventura, CA, added, “I like the fact that Startel’s SMS solution is fully integrated with our billing package and includes the ability to set unique IDs for clients and clients' clients.”

Startel’s Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM): Startel has created an enterprise instant messaging (EIM) Service that fully integrates with the Startel CMC platform’s administrative controls and can function as a standalone product administered via a Web Interface for customers utilizing other contact center solutions or simply wanting a standalone EIM service.

Startel’s EIM solution enables real-time text based communication between two or more participants over the Internet, the corporate Intranet, or both in combination.  Selected features include the ability to transfer files via the IM service, remote desktop monitoring, the ability to send broadcast messages, conference room capability, and secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption capability, as well as all standard features one would expect with an EIM service.

Other Standard features of Startel Call Management Center (CMC): Other standard features of Startel’s CMC are that it is HIPAA compliant and includes a CTI Interface and health level 7 (HL7) integration.  Software includes workforce management, intelligent dispatch, voice services, meet-me-paging, and Internet IntelliScheduler.  It is a Windows 7, SQL-based system.  Startel is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, as well as an independent software vendor (ISV).

New Location: Startel Corporation recently moved into their new state of the art facility located in the Irvine Spectrum, a high technology center of Orange County, CA.  Just one of the many benefits in the new building is access to the fastest fiber optics service in Southern California, which will allow Startel to expand into hosted services.  Their new address is 16 Goodyear, Irvine, CA 92618. 

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