Huntsville Wholesale Furniture (dba Ashley Furniture)

Objective:
Control the telephony expense in a rapidly growing furniture retailer, while providing a quality caller experience for employees and customers, and enable the IT department to direct the technology.

Situation:
Huntsville Wholesale Furniture (HWF) is a rapidly growing furniture retailer under the direction of Woody Marks, a demanding and vision-oriented manager. Ingram, the Director of IT, had been hired to put technology in place that would augment Woody's vision and at the same time create systems, checks, and balances to insure quality and accountability. Shortly after taking the position, Ingram realized that the hybrid phone system, his predecessor had invested in would not meet Woody's criteria. The expense would be too great and the administration overwhelming. Ingram knew the only technology that accommodates the vision would be an IP-PBX deploying SIP. Ingram planned to put in a Cisco Call Manager because of his experience with the product, until Blue Ocean invited him to look at a demo of the Interactive Intelligence EIC.

Resolution:
After examining the facts, Ingram decided to move forward with Blue Ocean and Interactive Intelligence. His decision boiled down to a couple things: Even though he intimately knew the Cisco product, it was expensive. He could hold the costs down by letting his staff implement it, but time constraints were already an issue. Blue Ocean's manpower could ease the time constraints of the implementation and their expertise could be useful, notably in the areas of: WAN configuration, SIP Trunking, and Call Flow design. The EIC's inexpensive redundant server application would insure the uptime Woody demanded. Since Ingram's IT shop was also predominantly Microsoft, Interactive Intelligence’s close integration with Microsoft would bring strong desktop efficiencies to his end users. It also allows him to accomplish his goal, to provide his users with a set of fluid tools to do their job, not a group of disparate technologies that frustrated them. Ingram started the rollout at the corporate office in Huntsville. Shortly after, he tied in the Huntsville store and Huntsville warehouse, then expanding to the Birmingham warehouse, and the Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Fultondale stores. Ingram's also decided to locate his equipment offsite at a Network Operations Center. This provides the most safeguards to maximize uptime. Ingram's infrastructure is now ready for anything Woody can dream up.