Australian Security Firm, Able Locksmiths, Adopts Secure, Feature- Rich Communications Solution
The Customer
For over 35 years, Able Locksmiths & Security has offered high-quality locksmith and security services to homes and businesses in Australia. A trusted name in security, Able Locksmiths is a family-run operation with a dedicated team of experienced locksmiths able to provide the best solutions for all lock and security needs. They also provide specialist locksmith, security, and property maintenance services for property managers across Sydney. As distributors, they are leading suppliers of high-quality products and accessories to the vending and self storage industries in Australia and New Zealand, used by Coca-Cola, Woolworths, Storage King, National Storage, and Big W. Able Locksmiths prides itself in bringing the highest level of attention to detail for every job, as only a family business can.
Business Challenges
Able Locksmiths were struggling with legacy business phone system equipment and PSTN connections when they determined it was time to upgrade and replace their communications system. Their system had only very limited management functionality usable for only core system programming, making any changes to extensions or equipment difficult and inconvenient. Not to mention, they were maintaining a phone system entirely separate from their main phone system to provide communications ability to their remote office little to no support. With their business growing and steady work coming in, their legacy phone system simply did not provide the functionality they needed to properly manage their ever-increasing number of inbound calls as the system provided no ability to distribute calls into queues to be answered by the proper person in their office or workshop. And with the business operating two completely separate phone systems, there was no ability to transfer calls internally between the main office and the remote office, making any communications and call transfers between locations unnecessarily difficult.
Solutions from Sangoma
A thriving business, Able Locksmiths knew they needed a new phone system that facilitated all the functionality that they were missing while allowing them to have the remote office connected to the main system while still billing their extensions separately from the main office. In their research, they found that Sangoma had a business communications platform that checked all their boxes while remaining affordably within their budget for a new phone system. To accommodate the functionality their business needed, Able Locksmiths opted to deploy FreePBX on a Dell server. This provides the core phone system functionality for the business, then to complement and expand the feature set available to them, they purchased and installed a number of Sangoma FreePBX commercial modules including extension routing, the Sangoma End Point Manager, interactive voice response, call queues, music on hold, call recording, date and time conditional call rules, call flow/queue control, and weekly off site system backup. And to complete their solution, they opted to deploy new Sangoma S-Series IP phones for all their extensions to provide handsets to their employees that offer the tightest possible integration with their Sangoma phone system and instant access to its robust functionality.
The Results
The owners and staff at Able Locksmiths are very satisfied with their full FreePBX solution from Sangoma. Deployment was fast, provisioning the phones was very easy with the Sangoma End Point Manager. The native functionality of FreePBX made it simple to configure their PBX to the exact requirements and desires of Able Locksmiths, including the ability to maintain separate extension billing for the remote office location while still staying connected to the central business phone system. One feature of their new phone system that the good people at Able Locksmiths are enjoying especially is the ease and robust flexibility with which system and extension changes can be made. With their old phone system, even the simplest change was arduous and expensive, but now changes can be made on the fly to extensions as well as to inbound call rules using the FreePBX commercial modules. The ease of using intercom to extensions to make quick announcements and communicate messages is very appreciated and has been a real game changer. Overall, Able Locksmiths are glad they found a complete communications solution from Sangoma and look forward to seeing their productivity increase as they take advantage of the Unified Communications functionality of their new phone system.