Prudential Northwest Properties Lands New Customers Using Secure 3Com Voice and Data Network.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 2003

Advanced Call Processing Features and Unified Messaging Boost

Productivity, Save Thousands in Maintenance and Service Fees

In the competitive real estate industry, victory goes to the agent who can respond quickly to potential buyers and sellers. As the largest locally owned real estate agency in the Pacific Northwest, Prudential Northwest Properties has 750 employees in 18 offices throughout Oregon and southwest Washington. However, the Portland-based firm wanted to ensure potential home buyers were never more than a phone call away from a hot property. Today, using a networked telephony, switching, and security solution from 3Com(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS), Prudential Northwest's agents need never miss an opportunity to make a sale.

"3Com took our customer service and operations to the next level for an extraordinarily low total cost of ownership," said Sean McRae, vice president and CIO, Prudential Northwest Properties. "We're now exceeding our customers' expectations at every touch point, winning new business more easily, and we expect to earn back our investment in this voice solution many times over."

An array of 3Com(R) Internet Protocol (IP)-based telephony systems tie Prudential Northwest's far-flung offices into a single voice infrastructure and implement industry-leading unified messaging capabilities--giving the real estate agency multiple ways to connect with customers and employees while saving significantly on telephone expenses. The 3Com networking solution prioritizes voice traffic, while ensuring uninterrupted high-quality connections.

"In order to win the business, our success is dependent on the quality of our follow-through and ability to prioritize customer communications," McRae said. "Our agents must have the necessary tools required to conduct business at a professional and efficient level from any location. 3Com gave us a solution that delivers e-mail to their mobile phones, pages them when they receive a critical fax and forwards messages of any type to their personal digital assistants (PDAs). This is a mobile business and 3Com's technology helps us to communicate better."

The integrated 3Com solution instantly saved agents more than 20 minutes a day and is helping them win new business via the services it delivers. Unified messaging incorporates landline and cellular phone calls as well as fax, e-mail, voice mail, pagers and wireless PDAs and laptops, giving agents maximum mobility without losing contact with buyers, sellers, mortgage brokers and other agents. Built-in "find me, follow me" notification forwards calls to the agent's phone, voice mailbox, and pager simultaneously, ensuring no call goes unnoticed. Other premium-quality features, such as direct dial numbers, hunt groups, dial plans, and call forwarding, further speed calls to their proper destinations.

In addition, the 3Com system integrates smoothly with Prudential Northwest's customer relationship management (CRM) database, allowing agents and call center employees to see at a glance who's calling, whether they've done business with the agency in the past and what transactions the caller is currently involved in--further improving customer service.

Previously, Prudential Northwest's offices used a variety of non-integrated PBX and key systems from multiple vendors, making moves-adds-changes difficult and costly. The obsolete legacy systems also lacked advanced call-handling features such as direct four-digit dialing between offices and integrated after-hours auto-attendants. In order to provide its employees with voice mail, the company was forced to utilize costly outsourced services or rely on aging standalone systems. Staying in touch in the field required agents to check their office voice mail from their cell phones and return to their desks frequently to read e-mail.

After consulting with its longtime reseller, Verizon, Prudential Northwest realized only IP telephony would allow it to integrate phone calls, faxes, voice and e-mail messages, and customer relationship databases into a single enterprise-wide infrastructure. The brokerage considered products from Cisco, Avaya, and Nortel, but decided on 3Com systems due to their ability to meet its rigorous demands cost-effectively without the need to replace its existing Ethernet local area network (LAN)/wide area network (WAN).

Powerful, Flexible, Comprehensive Communications

Powered by 3Com networked telephony and Ethernet switching solutions distributed among its five largest offices, Prudential Northwest's converged communications solution provides more than 450 agents with full-featured phone services via 3Com IP handsets. The 3Com VCX(TM) V7000 IP Telephony Solution, a scalable carrier-class open standards platform, supports each of these sites, extending advanced unified messaging to all 750 employees.

The 3Com platform's browser-based administration tool lets information technology (IT) staff configure and manage the entire phone system from any networked personal computer (PC). It also enables employees to move, add and change phones simply by plugging a 3Com handset into the nearest Ethernet port, saving substantial outsourced maintenance costs. The company is reaping further savings by replacing costly analog business phone lines with primary rate interface (PRI) T1 services and routing interoffice calls over the WAN instead of long distance lines. 3Com's "softphone" application, which allows any computer to be used as an 3Com phone, lets agents connect to their office extensions from home or hotels over a high-speed Internet connection.

About 3Com

3Com is a tier-one provider of innovative, practical and high-value voice and data networking products and solutions for enterprises of all sizes and public sector organizations. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

3Com and the 3Com logo are registered trademarks and VCX is a trademark of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective holders.