Case Study: Framework Creates Comprehensive Telecommunications Plan for National Staffing Firm

The Company

Framework Communications

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/framework-communications-llc

Twitter: @commframework

Framework Communications is a single-source managed IT and telecommunications solution and support provider. They do not create technology products. Instead, their vision is to reinvent how they connect their clients with technology.

The Client

The client is a national staffing firm with big-name clients like Waste Management. Headquartered in Chicago, the company has approximately 20 offices throughout the country, and a data center location as well.

The Challenge

The client frequently acquires smaller staffing agencies to continue to grow.  The company’s telecommunications were a sprawling hodgepodge of legacy analog phone systems, plain old telephone lines and DSL Internet service. With more than 20 separate telecommunications bills monthly, the cost of their telecommunications was over $10,000 per month. Moreover, the phone systems were not integrated in any way and had no redundancy or resiliency. The client was initially looking to upgrade their corporate headquarters’ phone system and to implement a plan to integrate all of their locations onto a single phone system. Additionally, they needed consulting to finalize the last portion of a project to institute storage and server fault tolerance to prevent any downtime of the corporate network.{ad} 

The Solution

Framework evaluated, analyzed and documented the client’s entire telecommunications infrastructure and monthly spending.  Framework then designed a centralized Avaya IP Office communications solution with a server at their corporate HQ office, a failover server at their data center site and VPN IP phones at all the branch offices. Framework also priced cable service for all the branch sites and designed a VoIP solution that included centralized SIP trunking and failover SIP trunking to the secondary server. Finally, Framework proposed 100MB Ethernet over fiber for the corporate HQ and an MPLS between HQ and the data center. 

Framework presented a complete spending analysis comparing the client’s current telecommunications solution to the recommended solution, which would allow the client to …

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… lower telecommunications spending by more than 40 percent. The savings on telecom service would pay for the new system within two years and the company would benefit from a streamlined deployment model, simplified system management, unified communications, greater telephony resiliency and uptime.

The client moved forward with the plan and Framework cut over the client’s corporate data network to the MPLS, installed fiber Ethernet, implemented the enterprise IP phone system at HQ and the data center, and moved all of their voice service to VoIP Synergy, their wholly owned business communications and cloud PBX provider, while creating minimal interruption to the organization.  Framework then implemented the cable internet and VPN phones at all of the branch offices and moved their phone numbers to the centralized corporate VoIP service plan.  After the implementation was completed, Framework and the client’s IT team performed fault tolerance and failover testing of the corporate IP telephony solution as well as the VoIP services solutions.  Finally, their IT consultants helped the client’s IT team reconfigure the corporate storage area network and VMware server environment to improve and then test the fault tolerance of the corporate data network. 

The Results

The comprehensive plan implemented for the client reduced their telecommunications spending by just over 40 percent, saving the company almost $150,000 in three years in just explicit costs.  The explicit cost savings of the voice and data services paid for the entire IP telephony solution in two years.   The redundancy built into the client’s phone system and VoIP service has also ensured that they have not had any downtime on their corporate communications system since the initial rollout nine months ago. The client used to have frequent outages and eliminating the downtime improved productivity. 

Additionally, Framework’s CareFree Managed Services Telephony solution provides the client’s IT team with a single-point of contact help desk to manage all of their voice network, IP telephony and voice and data support needs. This has freed up their IT staff tremendously. Productivity also increased with the use of unified communications features like chat, presence, voicemail to email, and mobility

Finally, the client’s five-year plan included greater acquisition activity.  The comprehensive telephony solution implemented by Framework allows the client to integrate an acquired company’s telecommunications with almost no lead time and little effort from their IT staff. This allows the client’s IT team to drastically reduce their service deployment timeframe for acquired companies and to immediately cut the acquired company’s telecommunications spending with minimal capex for the client.  

All of these features combined resulted in the IP telephony solution having an estimated ROI of less than one year. 

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