The Cornerstone Financial Group, a boutique wealth management firm in northern New Jersey,had an aging Avaya Partner phone system, plus seven analogue phone lines connected to the system, costing the company $210 a month.
The office spans two floors with individual offices for each employee, making certain call features very important to business operations. The firm also offers work-at-home options for some employees.
Louisa Voice proposed a premised-based VoIP solution with an open source, feature-rich Sipxcom telephony server and 12-linePolycom phones integrated with an open-source firewall.
Given Cornerstone’s monthly voice usage (approximately 4000 minutes), we selected a VoIP carrier that charged calls to the public voice network on a per-minute basis and allowed up to 25 concurrent calls to be placed. The voice services expense was dramatically reduced to around $30/month—a $2160 annual savings.In addition, the firm recouped its initial investment for the system upgrade in 18 months.
The selected VoIP server delivers capabilities such as voicemail to email, music on hold, and presence, intercom and shared lines, which simplify call transfer between offices. Shared lines are a difficult feature to implement on a VoIP solution and unavailable with many other open-source telephony solutions; however, Louisa Voice was able to implement this for the client.
The integrated firewall was configured to allow a remote employee working with a Polycom phone to access the office server securely, with the same features available in the office.
As an added service, Louisa Voice will sell the old voice systems at no charge, provided the client donates the proceeds to charity. The old Avaya system and phones were sold quickly on eBay and the Cornerstone Financial Group donated the proceeds to St. Christopher’s Inn, a men’s crisis center in Garrison, New York.