IP Convergence
Company builds voice network
A managed, premise-based service blends the strengths of IP PBX and hosted voice over IP.
"The PBX is located in my office and connected to our network via Ethernet, and we never have to touch it."
- Maria Dumke
Waterline Industries Corp.
builds water and wastewater systems to
support cities and towns, and when its
existing PBX began experiencing failures
management evaluated alternative voice
solutions. The company first selected a
hosted voice-over-IP (VoIP) service, but
after a bad experience and only 30 days of
operations it opted for a managed,
premise-based VoIP service. As a result,
Waterline has reduced its monthly
telecommunications costs and the company
increasingly relies on its managed VoIP
service to support the communications needs
of employees who travel frequently and spend
much of their time at job sites.
The firm had been relying
on a traditional PBX and a T-1 line for
voice communications. When the PBX began
experiencing problems with its circuitry,
the cost of repairing it would have been
prohibitive, according to Maria Dumke,
Waterline vice president of finance and
administration. "It would have been more
expensive to repair it than replace it, and
we evaluated alternative solutions," she
says. "VoIP seemed to offer more features at
a lower cost, and we selected a hosted VoIP
service and they ported our numbers."
But Waterline experienced
immediate problems with the hosted VoIP
service. "The voice quality was terrible and
the phones were hard to use," says Dumke.
"Employees complained about the call
quality, and we were experiencing a
'learning curve mutiny' since employees
needed training on the phones to access the
simplest features, such as accessing voice
mail and transferring calls.
"The hosted VoIP service
brought all calls back to its backbone,
which was located 2,000 miles away from us,
and we even experienced delays on internal
calls within the office. We liked the idea
of running our calls through the Internet,
and didn't want to invest in purchasing a
new PBX platform, so we evaluated
alternative approaches and selected a
managed, premise-based solution from
Whaleback Systems."
Dumke says the managed
service blends the strengths of a
premise-based IP PBX and hosted VoIP by
freeing Waterline from the expense and
feature limitations of IP Centrex telephony
services or installing and managing its own
IP PBX systems. The company can take
advantage of current telephony technologies
and leverage voice technology over broadband
connections to reduce bandwidth costs.
Although Waterline
initially did not want a PBX located onsite,
Whaleback Systems educated the company on
the benefits of its managed service
architecture. Whaleback installed an IP PBX
at Waterline's headquarters, which Whaleback
manages centrally from its network
operations center.
"We wanted to outsource
our phone service, and this type of managed
service offering was appealing to us,"
explains Dumke. "The PBX is located in my
office and connected to our network via
Ethernet, and we never have to touch it. The
service provider manages it remotely and
monitors performance to ensure we receive
high call quality for our inbound and
outbound calls."
As part of the service,
Waterline selected a suite of fully
configured, advanced IP executive handsets,
which are three-line IP phones with
full-duplex speakerphone capabilities.
Whaleback ported Waterline's old lines and
assigned a dedicated contiguous range of
direct inward dial numbers to support future
company growth.
Waterline employees now
have access to call forwarding, conferencing
and dozens of other calling features, and
the company relies on the premise-based IP
PBX's auto-attendant to route inbound calls.
The service offers a variety of features
that enhances productivity by delivering
click-to-dial functionality across multiple
applications.
The headquarters supports
two businesses, Waterline Industries Corp.
and its sister firm Waterline Services,
which provides operations, maintenance and
mechanical support to customers. Both
companies have their own general phone
numbers, and inbound calls to the main
numbers are directed to an auto-attendant,
which allows Waterline to automatically
direct calls for both companies, without the
need for a telephone operator.
Each company has an
emergency line that can be reached by
dialing the main phone number. "Service
businesses need to be able to allow
customers to reach them quickly, and any
call to our emergency lines will generate
e-mails to management. Cities and towns
occasionally need the ability to reach
wastewater system experts quickly, and the
automatic generation of voice messages via
e-mail to defined employee lists ensures
that we can be extremely responsive to
customers," explains Dumke.
Waterline typically works
on about a dozen construction projects at a
time, and many employees spend most of their
time onsite. Employees can forward their
inbound calls directly to their cell phones,
and employees in the office can reach remote
workers on their cell phones by dialing
their extensions.
Several employees take
advantage of advanced remote workforce
capabilities-called "Road Warrior"-offered
by Whaleback. "I have a Polycom 501 handset
in my home office that rings when I receive
business calls, and I can access all of the
same features from my home that I can use at
the office," says Dumke.
Several Waterline workers
also use a special softphone client that
provides remote voice connectivity through
laptop computers. "I can use this
functionality when I'm traveling by just
linking my laptop to a broadband connection
and launching the softphone," Dumke offers.
"I receive inbound calls from the road, and
I can place calls directly from my PC. I can
see my contact directory right in front of
me on my laptop screen and use the service's
click-to-call feature to easily connect to
clients."
Waterline plans to expand
the use of Road Warrior remote workforce
capabilities by deploying phones at
construction sites so field engineers will
benefit from the inbound and outbound
calling features available at their desk
when they are in the field.
The managed service has
now been operational at Waterline for more
than a year. "We were an early user of
Whaleback's CrystalBlue Voice service, and
the company has worked closely with us to
make sure that we get the most from this
managed service," says Dumke.
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