Datapoint UK was finally ready to talk yesterday of its UKP3m contract with Midland Bank to design the systems for the Midland Group’s new bank, FirstDirect (CI No 1,274). Datapoint claims that it was chosen because it could meet Midland’s requirements for confidentiality and absolute commitment to time scales, and it was able also to provide all the components necessary to build the system. A number of components were used by Datapoint in the design of the system: its Automatic Call Distribution System, ACD86, a telephone call handling device, combining telephony and a call centre management tool. It comprises several subsystems, including a host general-purpose processor that forms the central point of the whole system, disk storage, a printer, an intelligent switch, which is a dedicated microprocessor-based controller, managing details of call processing, circuit-agent interfaces, announcements and supervisor consoles, equipped with a real-time video display; Edge software running on Bull Pick machines to build the front end of the system and a Davox workstation, which is a multipersonality terminal, providing easy access to other systems. There are 190 trunks into the ACD and presently up to 150 people are using the system at any one time. Datapoint started the development in February and the system was delivered to Midland in June, ready for dress rehearsal in August. The major hurdle in building the system was the time scale but it managed to deliver the system on time, having up to 12 people working on the project at peak. Datapoint will continue to provide full support for FirstDirect for the next few years, and is contracted to supply hardware and software components for the next seven years -and is now keen to design a similar system for other organisations.
