Westwind Digital Communications

Most of the time we get your run-of-the-mill telephone system request. That does not mean we take short cuts when it comes to finding out about a customer’s operations. For one thing, as a trust I.T. provider we do not want to over look any aspect as it may come back to haunt us down the road. Secondly, asking the right questions allows us to sometimes find a way we can make a customer more efficient and save money at the same time. That‘s when we become a trusted partner in their business.

I have stated this before, we are lucky to have some of the best technicians in the entire state of Oklahoma. Combined they account for over 100 years of technical expertise. That does not mean they are miracle workers and when its time for a phone system to be put to rest, it’s time. We had a customer who was seeing more and more of our techs at a regular interval.

Chad and I went to see them and after doing some digging, we discovered a way to save them over $6,600 a year on their phone bill. The main office was in Oklahoma City and had two satellite offices in Edmond and Wilson Oklahoma. They also had an employee that worked out of her home in Albuquerque, NM. The office in South OKC had been connected point-to-point to Edmond with a dedicated T1 line and all four locations were incurring considerable long distance charges as they all interacted with one another on a daily basis.

What did we come up with for a solution? Well, we installed a new Toshiba CIX 670 phone system, ordered a PRI from AT&T, and killed the dedicated T1 line between the two offices. On the phone system was a new MAS (Media Application Server) with unified messaging and fax to desktop. This centralized the voicemail for all four locations. We then set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and tied all four offices together using Cisco routers. This way we were able to utilize VoIP and eliminate the long distance charges from the telephone carrier. Another great benefit is we did NOT need to travel to New Mexico to set up the home office. Our technician simply programmed the phone and mailed it to the young lady’s home in Albuquerque. All she had to do was plug her phone in and she was off and calling! Now any call comes to the receptionist in OKC and she is able to rout it to the proper office with the caller not knowing where they called in the first place.

In the end, the customer really did not care what we had done. They got a new phone system, it works, and he saves money every month. Simple as that.

Although I have never personally done a remodel, I know people who have had to endure that grueling chore. I’ve been told that a remodel is slightly better than building a new house, to which I have heard that fun task called a divorce maker. In other words, it’s no fun. The other aspect to both that I have heard is the budget is a starting point, and not what you are going to spend on the project.

Recently we were called out to replace the phone system at a hotel that was going through a remodel and name change. Not that he was very excited to spend the extra money on a new Toshiba phone system near the end of an 18-month remodel; although he was lucky we got the 24-year-old Mitel to work as long as it did. Our techs are the best in Oklahoma, but they stopped making parts for the beast in the late 80’s. There comes to a point when you get past bubble gum, duct tape, and prayers to keep an electronic device working. The boys had gotten there about seven service calls before, and I’m not joking about the size either. Imagine a square version of R2D2 that’s less mobile.

Before the Mitel system finally died, he had asked us to come out and evaluate where to put video surveillance cameras. Morton’s Salt and Murphy were running the gambit on our poor customer and I do not fault him one bit for dropping the camera job to replace the phone system. He was ready to get the whole remodel behind him.

The only problem was part of the remodel was installing nice new Panasonic 42” plasma flat screen televisions. I say it was a problem because those TVs started to walk out of the hotel. Unfortunately, it was not hard. This is a huge hotel and it has multiple exits spread out all over several buildings. Had he decided to go ahead when he first called to have us put in the video surveillance system, he would have actually saved money by not replacing the televisions. I guess this way it makes for a better “lessons learned” story.