“We estimate that we’ll save between $25,000 and $50,000 per year with our new Hosted Voice and Unified Communications solution.”
—Jim Hill, Director of IT, Admiral Beverage Corp
Admiral Beverage used PBXs at its 22 locations across nine states, many of which were aging and unstable. “At a lot of our smaller sites, the voice systems were really struggling. The phones, voicemail, or both literally would not work,” explains Jim Hill, Director of IT, Admiral Beverage Corporation.
“External customers couldn’t get through to place orders and our staff out in the field could not call into their voicemail to monitor order levels.” With communications and logistics central to Admiral’s successful beverage production and fulfillment business, the company reached out to 2Evolve Technologies, their trusted IT consultant, to help identify and implement a better solution.
Admiral Beverage first considered and set up a pilot of another provider’s Hosted Voice system. When 2Evolve introduced its IT leaders to Fusion Connect Hosted Voice, the company decided to try it as well. After comparing the two systems, Admiral Beverage selected Fusion Connect Hosted Voice “for its superior feature set,” and the fact that its “a large, stable company,” according to Hill.
“Hosted Voice gives us advanced features we didn’t have with our old PBXs,” says Hill. For example, Find Me/Follow Me lets users forward their desk phone to their cell phone and use it as their primary business phone while they are out of office.
“Our employees love that they can use one number—their Hosted Voice business number—to be reached on virtually any device.” Visual Voicemail has also been a much appreciated feature, according to Hill.
“If users don’t want to take a call because they’re meeting a client, for example, they can let it go to voicemail and it gets delivered to their Inbox transcribed into easy-to-read text. Users really like the fact that they can spot check voicemail from their Smartphone. Scanning the text is quicker and much less disruptive than listening through recorded voicemails.”
To further meet Admiral Beverage’s communications and logistics needs, the company is deploying Unified Communications, in addition to Hosted Voice. Within the UC app, users can see which contacts are online, make or receive voice calls via the softphone client and easily record calls on the fly.
Users can also reach contacts with an IM, SMS text, or HD voice or video call, and share their screen with up to 100 online meeting participants. UC delivers this functionality within a single, intuitive interface that’s available on desktop, mobile, or tablet devices.
One of Admiral Beverage’s goals in modernizing its voice system was to reduce costs, specifically, long distance charges and costs for local lines/phone numbers.
“We estimate that we’ll save between $25,000 and $50,000 per year with our new Hosted Voice and Unified Communications solution,” says Hill. “Some companies might not consider that a lot, but we think it’s a lot.”
With an internal IT team that is stretched thin and already dedicated to other projects, Admiral Beverage opted for Professional Installation. The implementation team consisted of a project lead from Admiral Beverage and Voice implementation experts from both Fusion Connect and 2Evolve Technologies.
“The combined team has worked directly with our local offices and site managers regarding lines, users, call routing, and so on. They have been very helpful,” says Hill.
Begun in 1947 with a single production line bottling two flavors, Admiral Beverage Co. has grown considerably. Today they produce and distribute hundreds of flavors and brands of beverages in bottles and cans. The company operates 35 facilities throughout a nine-state region, offering ready-to-drink teas, juices, beer, full-calorie, mid-calorie, and zero-calorie soft drinks, as well as its own brand of bottled water.
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Hosted Voice (VoIP)
Unified Communications
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“Our employees love that they can use one number—their Hosted Voice business number—to be reached on virtually any device.”
– Jim Hill, Director of IT, Admiral Beverage Corp
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