PBX Lease Returns

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PBX Lease Returns At the time of the implementation, 22 of the 55 Cisco Expansion Port Network (EPN) PBXs were leased, which meant that the IP Telephony implementation schedule was largely dictated by the PBX lease return dates. To keep the massive effort of returning the large quantity of leased equipment organized and on schedule, the team leader who was responsible for the retrofit cleanup effort entered all the Cisco PBX leases onto a spreadsheet and developed a Microsoft project plan to keep the returns on track. The initiative involved returning each leased PBX, along with its ancillary parts, throughout the San Jose campus. In 2003, the two main leased PBXs were removed and fully disconnected. Chapter 7, "Moving Forward: Continuing to Be Cisco's First and Best Customer," outlines that process in more detail. "Getting the equipment out of the buildings was the easy part," says Reid Bourdet, SPM IT project manager and team lead who was responsible for returning all the Cisco leased legacy PBX equipment. Like a lot of large enterprises, Cisco had taken each lease agreement and allocated that lease to various buildings. "Because of the sheer size of the deployment, we had to pull all of the equipment back together to rebuild the original lease, ensuring that it was all there, and matched the original equipment list before we returned it," Bourdet recalls. The other challenge was to ensure that when the PBX deinstallations were conducted, steps were taken to prevent creating alarms from the equipment that remained. Cisco developed a procedure that entailed removing the software, removing all the trunks�the lines coming into the PBX�and then removing the cabinet from the CPU. "You have to tell the CPU that the cabinets are no longer there. If you don't, the CPU is always looking for them and will alarm the system," Bourdet cautions. Each PBX hardware deinstallation took an average of one working day, whereas the software removal required an additional three to four hours. Staffing involved four technicians who were familiar with the PBX network and knowledgeable on trunking technology. An additional telecom administrator removed the phone sets from the software configuration. "It's really important that the individuals doing the actual deinstalls are qualified and familiar with this type of network," Bourdet said. "We were fortunate enough to have the necessary resources on staff. If we didn't, we would have outsourced that part of the initiative to PBX-certified individuals." Although the equipment disconnection and retrieval went smoothly for the team, they did experience a problem reconciling their equipment list with the vendor's. "We followed the lessor's instructions to the letter, but we still ended up with disagreements about the quantities of equipment that we returned," Bourdet says. The leasing company did not inventory the equipment when it arrived at the facility, instead turning it over to a secondary market vendor. "The secondary vendor then either miscounted it, or things got lost between here and there, because our records and their records did not match. If I had it to do over, I would have gone an additional step that included a box level inventory of the equipment, rather than a consolidated list," Bourdet adds. Results of PBX Lease Return Initiative STATUS: 99.9 percent of all leased equipment up for renewal was returned. More than U.S. $3.5 million dollars (market value) of equipment was returned, including 22 PBX EPNs and 10,000 phones. U.S. $128,888 per month was saved in leased equipment cost. All final leftover equipment was inventoried and identified for lab testing use or reselling opportunities. RESULTS: The San Jose campus is completely retrofitted and is now 100 percent IP Telephony-ready. Best Practices: PBX Lease Returns Enter all PBX lease renewal dates and associated equipment onto a spreadsheet for tracking purposes, and build a project plan that schedules the deinstallations and returns. Develop a process that prevents alarms when removing cabinets from the PBX. Ensure that only PBX-certified technicians are involved in the deinstallation. Carefully match the equipment list on the original lease agreement to the inventory being returned, create a box-level inventory list, and get a signed receiving list from the vendor.

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