BACKGROUND
G.A. Sullivan, a global Internet software company, provides custom e-commerce and application development services to Fortune 500 companies. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri -- with offices in Kansas City, Nashville, Cincinnati, San Antonio, Southern Illinois and the Netherlands -- the company specializes in advising organizations on using the Internet to gain competitive advantage and developing e-business solutions to achieve that goal. G.A. Sullivan has twice been named Microsoft’s “Mid-America District Partner of the Year” and is a member of Microsoft Corporation’s Partner Advisory Council.

Over the last six years, G.A. Sullivan has experienced extensive growth and added new offices. With an increasing number of customers plus new office locations, employees had a greater need to improve productivity, specifically when retrieving and responding to important messages from customers and colleagues. G.A. Sullivan feels one of its major market advantages is the company’s attention to customer service.

More than half of the growing company’s 325 employees are classified as “mobile” and require dependable remote access to company information while traveling. Steve Hays, vice president of information systems, is responsible for deploying the latest technology that will allow employees to easily retrieve messages, both while traveling and in the office.

THE CHALLENGE
G.A. Sullivan’s growing group of mobile employees, including consultants, sales representatives and management, were finding that retrieving any given workday’s messages in different formats—voice, fax, e-mail—was time-consuming and unreliable. “Some executives could not find the time to check each message source and were missing important messages,” comments Hays. “Additionally, remote employees would have to make multiple long-distance calls to check messages, a system that proved to be a large expense for the company.”

Hays recognized that G.A. Sullivan’s employees depended on their email and liked receiving information in one central source—often retrieving those messages over the Internet while working remotely. However, G.A. Sullivan did not have a system in place that centralized email, fax and voicemail messages. To make the message retrieval process less of a daunting and inefficient task, Hays began to explore unified messaging options.

THE SOLUTION
G.A. Sullivan considered several unified messaging systems before choosing AVST CallXpress® for Microsoft Exchange®. In addition to providing users with the ability to retrieve all messages from their Microsoft Outlook® e-mail Inbox, CallXpress enables them to dial in and listen to both voice and email messages over the telephone. This system provides an effective alternative if a remote employee has access to the Internet or to a telephone but not both. Also, having all messages in one Inbox helps employees create a “task list” in one central location.

“CallXpress offered a competitive price and all of the capabilities we needed,” notes Hays, “Because all offices are connected over a WAN, it was particularly beneficial to have the ability to centrally manage the entire system from the corporate office.” This saves system administration time and associated costs.

Another differentiator between CallXpress and other unified messaging systems was its integration with G.A. Sullivan’s telephone system, a Sphericall IP PBX solution. Sphericall sends inter-office phone connections over the company’s broadband data network, so the solution has essentially made G.A. Sullivan its own phone company for internal communications. Calls within and between offices – including the Netherlands location -- never need to access the public telephone system. The company receptionist is able to transfer a call to any remote location by dragging and dropping phone calls on her desktop monitor. Now, using unified messaging, she also has the option of emailing a voicemail message to a remote employee.

Because CallXpress converts voicemail to .wav files, users are able to easily forward messages to colleagues -- a feature that has been beneficial for G.A. Sullivan. “It’s great to add a comment to a voicemail and then forward it to an individual or a group of individuals,” comments Hays. Important voice messages also can be kept in the Microsoft Inbox or filed in other appropriate Outlook folders along with other messages types.

G.A. Sullivan implemented CallXpress in all seven offices in less than two days and has been very satisfied with the technical support. CallXpress integrated seamlessly with the company’s Microsoft Exchange server.

G.A. Sullivan is also using RightFax network fax server software, which enables them to fax to and from the desktop. For example, employees can translate a Microsoft Office® document into a fax document and then send from their desktop, to several recipients as a fax or an email.

Since implementing CallXpress unified messaging, G.A. Sullivan employees have found that it is easier to access and manage information needed to complete daily tasks. CallXpress has greatly improved productivity: Hays estimates that prior to implementing AVST CallXpress for Microsoft Exchange, employees were spending twice as much time checking messages. “The bottom line is, we are now better equipped to communicate with our customers and with each other,” says Hays.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (“AVST”) is a leader in the unified communications (“UC”) marketplace uniquely combining the strengths of its world-class messaging platform, CallXpress®, with its speech-enabled call management module, Seneca™, to create a powerful, next-generation unified communications solution. The Company’s products are designed to scale and support organizations of all sizes. For more information please contact us at: www.avst.com or +1.949.699.2300.