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BOSTON - When staffing firm Aquent scrapped its decentralized phone system for an outsourced VoIP service it saved $20,000 per month, expanded the featuresof its videoconferencing system and enhanced functionality of its ERP system in one fell swoop.
The service from hosted VoIP provider M5 Networks also lets the company easily pass calls geographically, support disaster- recovery for the phone system and offer centralized voice mail that's integrated with e-mail, says Larry Bolick, Aquent's CIO.
The company had a mix of Nortel and Inter-Tel PBXs at its 40 North American sites serving 800 employees and 400 to 500 phones. The PBXs were nearing the end of their useful lives when the company decided to change its business structure so that its different lines of business were handled by dispersed teams located in different offices.
That meant the teams needed better ways of communicating with each other. For example, if a member of the marketing team wasn't available, incoming calls had to be directed to another member of the team regardless of where that member was located.
Similarly, the new system needed to be able to forward calls to other devices such as handhelds. and to send voice mail as e-mail attachments so practice members could always be reachable.
Bolick wanted to move...