Globus Eight Achieves a State of the Art Unified Communications System with FreePBX
The Customer
Globus Eight is a leading IT System Integration company with head-offices in India and the USA. The company earned a reputation for being a disrupter in the tech space when they released the G8 Eco App, an economical high performance desktop replacement. The company offers turnkey solutions to various sectors like Education, Retail, Realty, Hospitality, Healthcare and Enterprises India, USA and Africa.
Business Challenges
As an international company with multiple locations, telecommunication was one of the primary channels used for communication between the staff, partners, service providers and customers. The company depended heavily on traditional phone lines and cell phones as the primary channels for communication. These methods were expensive and did not offer any of the current business calling features which most phone systems today have. For a young and fast-growing company like Globus Eight, it was crucial to graduate to a high-quality, value-based, self-serving phone system that would provide top quality voice communication while keeping the costs low. The customer approached Onewood – a system integrator who suggested the deployment of the FreePBX solution. The main challenges faced by the customer were: The huge, recurring phone bill overheads every month The lack of a single, unified, company-wide business communication system Non-availability of auto-attendant and voicemail features The unavailability of business features like conference calls and call-recording The absence of features to run inbound/outbound call campaigns The limitations due to the dependence on a 3rd party system
Solutions from Sangoma
The Sangoma solution included installing of two FreePBX instances and the following commercial modules – Class of Service, Fax Pro and Call Recording Reports. The FreePBX instances were installed in India and the US. In India, the FreePBX system was linked to the local PSTN and in the US, the system was linked to two ITSP lines. This enabled inbound and outbound calling with the outside world. The two FreePBX systems were then connected to each other through an IAX2 trunk to enable seamless calling between the staff in the India and the US offices. IVRs were installed on the FreePBX system, and they were connected several endpoints at both locations. The Role played by the Commercial Modules: While the FreePBX deployment provided a superior, high-quality phone system, the customer wanted to leverage the power of the commercial modules to achieve some superior calling features. These include: Class of Service: This module was used to provide granular control at the extension level to access and set permissions for specific calling features in the PBX system. These features include Outbound Routes, Feature Codes, Ring Groups, Queues, Conference Rooms, Voicemail Blast Groups and Paging. Fax Pro Module: The Fax Pro module is a reliable, robust inbound/outbound faxing server. This module allowed the customer to enable faxing for their users on the system. They then had to point a phone number to a specific fax user. Call Recording Reports: The Call Recording Report Module enabled the customer to view, sort, listen to, archive and download all recorded calls on their system. This module also helped to overcome two general challenges with call recording – of having to search the system Call Detail Records for call recordings and running out of storage on your system due to required archiving of call recordings.
The Results
The deployment of the Sangoma FreePBX solution gave the customer a top-quality, fully-featured, complete business phone system at an unbelievably low cost. How did the customer benefit? Affordable investment. FreePBX distro is open-source and free to use. The commercial modules have a nominal price tag. The cost of business communication was decreased by 90%after moving to FreePBX. The new-phone-setup complete with individual extensions, positively affected business growth. The Voicemail feature provided convenience in communication. The setup of IVR helped the clients to reach the company staff easily and directly. The Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) or call queueing feature allowed queueing of incoming calls and ensuring that no calls are missed. The conference bridge allowed for conference calls between the staff and clients. Call Recording Reports allowed the company to record and keep a track of all the calls with the clients. In summary, by deploying FreePBX and the commercial modules, the customer achieved a world-class business communication system at a very affordable price and reduced the monthly telephone overhead to a bare minimum. The internal calls became almost free and the international call pricing now equals that of local calls due to the adaptation of SIP trunk. The new phone system infused positivity in the young, growing company.