T1 spans connect the 9200 CBX in the Phoenix headquarters with the 9200 at the Tucson credit office. Additional T1 lines extend in a star topology from each office to the Ugly Duckling dealer locations. The company is also testing videoconferencing. The NetAsset 1200 Bandwidth Manager, from Siemens' Network Systems and Services group, resides at the Phoenix and Tucson locations and uses frame relay to allocate bandwidth among voice, data and video, helping ensure efficient use of available bandwidth. PC terminals connect through the WAN and LAN to the company's host computer in Tucson.
Sales associates can use the PCs to get fast responses on new credit applications.
Also, more than 50 agents in Tucson use the system to track nearly 10,000 loans. When a customer makes a payment, an agent immediately logs it into the system, which everyone can access. That's because coordinating data between locations was so difficult. Sixty-five percent of the calls are outgoing, while 35 percent are inbound. And now we're poised to grow 10 times that in a year's time.