Crane Plumbing® Installs CallXpress® Unified Communications

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a provider of unified communications solutions, today announced that its flagship product, CallXpress, was chosen to replace an aging Nortel Meridian voice mail system at Crane Plumbing LLC, one of the known manufacturers and distributors of plumbing fixtures and specialty plumbing products. CallXpress was specifically selected by Crane’s IT department because it is easy to use and integrates perfectly with their voice over IP (VoIP) system.

For more than 150 years, Crane Plumbing has built a strong brand name for quality and customer service in both the retail and commercial plumbing markets. With several well-known brand names, the company serves thousands of customers in a wide array of markets including fine homes, apartments, hotels, schools, stadiums, theme parks, airports, hospitals and commercial buildings throughout North America.

Crane Plumbing was using an aging Nortel Meridian system that no longer met its communications needs. The company was updating its voice and data infrastructure and decided to move to a VoIP system. After choosing Avaya® for its phone system, it needed a unified messaging architecture that easily integrated with the new IP switch.

Crane was introduced to AVST’s CallXpress unified communications solution by Altura Communication Solutions, a trusted partner to Crane and an AVST authorised reseller. Compared to other systems under consideration, CallXpress was competitively priced, it was more user friendly, and it offered a seamless integration to Crane’s new Avaya VoIP system.

“CallXpress is very user friendly, unlike our old system which was very intimidating,” said Jacob Bright, Crane Plumbing’s Senior Networks and Telecommunications Manager. “Our employees are very pleased with CallXpress. In fact, half of the calls after the implementation coming in to our help desk are about how easy the system is to use when compared to the old system.”

“What separates Altura from our competition is our ability to bring the best of breed solutions and top rated service and support to our customers,” said Mark Izumi, Altura’s Director of Sales and Marketing. “CallXpress provides the best administration and unified messaging solution in the marketplace.”

Initially, Altura installed CallXpress for 175 users across four of Crane’s sites. Once the final rollout is completed, up to 5000 employees across 17 sites will be using CallXpress in the United States and Canada. The company plans to use more features of CallXpress in the future, with a complete rollout of unified messaging when the new server is fully deployed.

“CallXpress was far easier to set up than other systems,” added Bright. “AVST’s documentation is very well written, with easy-to-follow instructions to set up mailboxes. We enjoyed an easy, seamless transition to the new system.”

The administration features were the key to Crane’s success with CallXpress. Crane’s administrators were impressed with its ability to easily create and add users, change how messages work, sort messages by departments and work with time zones. In addition, AVST’s licensing model was a great benefit, enabling Crane to choose a la carte features, giving certain capabilities to only those employees that need it. Crane only pays the UM licensing fees for those specific employees that need it and use it on a case-by-case basis, resulting in impressive cost savings.

“We pride ourselves in the fact that CallXpress was specially designed to be tailored to meet the needs of any business in any industry,” said Denny Michael, AVST’s Vice President of Marketing. “CallXpress is a premier unified communications solution that is highly reliable and easy to implement and manage. The Crane Plumbing deployment is a great example of how CallXpress can be easily deployed to update or replace an aging messaging system while adding new and helpful features to even the latest VoIP system.”

CallXpress is a unified communications solution that delivers world-class call processing, voice messaging, unified messaging, fax, notification and advanced speech applications. CallXpress increases employee productivity, effectiveness and collaboration at a minimal investment. With all messages arriving in a single inbox, CallXpress greatly improves message management time. Its extensive voice mail functionality ensures that all employees receive their messages efficiently and have the ability to answer queries promptly.