Company Background
The client is a full-service mortgage lender with over 300 employees across the country.
Business Challenge
As part of a technology and infrastructure refresh, the client set a goal to migrate as much of their services and solutions that they leverage to the cloud as possible. That strategy included their phone system. After relying on Stratosphere for Avaya IP Office support and maintenance for over seven years, the client wanted to migrate to a cloud phone system. Their on-premises Avaya system was expensive to maintain and keep up to date.
Stratosphere Networks Solution
The client turned to our trusted advisors to explore their cloud phone system options. While our advisors vetted a number of suppliers, CallTower's Microsoft Teams direct routing solution with phone system licenses was a favorite because the client's in-office and remote workers already relied heavily on Teams. CallTower also offered them competitive pricing.
Working with our advisors had considerable advantages for the client, including the following:
- Access to the latest market research data
- Objective and consultative analysis from our advisors considering a wide range of options, as opposed to biased direct sales pitches from reps focused on one brand
Insights from the Pathfinder tool, which is built on Salesforce and leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive informed IT decision-making with the following features:
Interactive quick assessments to evaluate solutions based on the client's needs
Dynamic comparison matrices including vital factors such as security, compliance and market share
Supplier battlecards that include not only strengths but also weaknesses/case studies/video briefings/white papers
Data center locator with virtual tours/real-time fiber locator
- Access to our home-grown ROI tools, which quickly determine the total cost of ownership and (in most instances) potential savings from the client's current total spend
- Connections to channel-only solutions from suppliers that the client couldn't have engaged with on their own due to the lack of direct sales teams
- Countless hours saved, as it would have taken the client weeks to assemble all of the data that our advisors produced in mere minutes with our advanced tools
- Access to our state-of-the-art demo labs in downtown Chicago and Dallas
- ZERO fees for all of the above. We don't charge for any of these advisory services, and supplier pricing is guaranteed to match or beat pricing from the supplier's direct sales rep.
For more information about our trusted advisor services, watch this brief video.
Benefits
Working with our trusted advisors to migrate to a CallTower Teams direct routing solution proved advantageous to the client in many ways, including the following:
- Cost savings since the cloud system isn't as expensive as maintaining an on-prem phone system
- Greater convenience and flexibility for remote workers
- A truly native Teams solution with services beyond what Microsoft offers in terms of implementation, support, redundancy and features
- Lower licensing costs as CallTower's solution is significantly less expensive than direct Microsoft licensing (on top of better performance, functionality, features and support)
Overall, thanks to our advisory services, the client has contained costs while increasing efficiency, flexibility and accessibility.