Headquartered in the Los Angeles area, Anthony International is a developer and manufacturer of refrigeration and shelving products for an eclectic group of consumers, including supermarkets, warehouse clubs, service stations, florists and other retailers. The company maintains several

production facilities across the United States and Europe, and operates a call center in Southern California to facilitate orders.

Maintaining efficient communications throughout the network is a critical task. Most of its sales are generated from incoming calls. Distributing this heavy phone traffic to the right individual or department in a timely fashion has always been an important element to Anthony International's growth, but, until recently, redirecting incoming orders and customer-service queries was a cumbersome task that left many callers and staff with a sense of frustration.

Anthony International relied on a myriad of hardware, software and carrier vendors for its communications needs, resulting in a patchwork network that differed widely between its locations. Additionally, as a result of this hodge-podge infrastructure, the firm regularly incurred monthly telephone charges exceeding $30,000 from its providers. Most importantly, customer service began to slip when incoming calls went unanswered.

"What we had was a real mess," remembers Disa Gause, Anthony International's accounting manager. "We were receiving invoices from many different vendors and some of the bills I couldn't even figure out. And on top of the expenses, our communications system was cumbersome and inefficient. We were relying too much on our paging system, which was disrupting our work environment. We knew we had to make a change."

Anthony International executives met with integrator BTI Communications Group, which assessed Anthony International's needs and developed a course of action.

VOIP RECOMMENDED

"One of the first suggestions we made was far Anthony International to leverage Inter-Tel's Axxess converged platform to deliver voice-over-IP (VoIP) capabilities throughout its network," says Eric Brackett, chief executive of BTI. "This provided common functionality to every endpoint in the Anthony International infrastructure, which was something they were clearly lacking."

BTI recommended that the integration of many applications built into the Axxess converged platform would improve the efficiency and productivity of Anthony International. Wireless handsets, for example, strategically positioned throughout warehouses and production facilities, could improve Anthony International's work environment, resulting in a more conducive, professional atmosphere.

"The old system that Anthony International used relied heavily on the internal paging system, which had quickly become a source of nuisance," explains Brackett. "Since there was no direct communication link between the receptionists and personnel on the floor and in the warehouse, there was no choice but to use the paging system to reach staff."

By deploying the wireless endpoints, the receptionists can immediately transfer calls to employees who work in mobile settings, at any of Anthony International's locations. This has reduced its paging by about 95%, according to Gause.

The integration of the wireless endpoints reduced costs for Anthony International in other areas, as well. The company no longer needed its elaborate, yet inconsistent walkie-talkies and expensive cell phones to reach colleagues. The wireless instruments would handle those specific duties, seamlessly. Anthony International was also able to leverage its new VoIP network by distributing IP phones to its remote sales force, thus centralizing and controlling costs.

In addition to the new hardware, BTI introduced Anthony International to several Inter-Tel presence applications to improve business processes even more. For example, Inter-Tel's Unified Communicator v-2.0 software enables colleagues around the globe to see the status of their associates, partners and customers regardless of geography. When the software determines that the intended party is available, a phone call can be initiated from the desktop.

Users also can determine bow they can be reached. If a sales person is expecting a call from a prospective customer, he can route that urgent call directly to his wireless extension or cell phone, while sending all other callers to associates, voice mail and any other destination of his choosing.

Adding to the list of new applications was the inclusion of Inter-Tel's Call Center Suite, which helped the company track the metrics of each call, answering a litany of questions that had never been addressed, such as how many calls come to the company, who answers these calls and how long does efficiently handling these calls take.

To help regain control of its telecommunications services, Anthony International opted for Inter-Tel's managed services program, which enabled the company to go to one source for all of its telecommunications needs. BTI was able to negotiate a lower rare far carrier services for Anthony International as part of the managed services approach, and was able to build in a migration strategy for the company should it choose to upgrade its system down the road.