Altigen Success Story: Craft Diston Industries
Location: Multiple Locations (VA, CA, FL, KS, OR, AZ)
Type of Business: Shower Door, Tub Enclosure and Mirror Closet Door Manufacturer
Challenge: To unify Craft Diston, save money, and network eleven locations with VoIP.
Success Story Summary
Craft Diston Industries, a growing shower door, tub enclosure and mirror closet door manufacturer implemented 11 sites of AltiGen systems in a 21-day period. They had switched over from Cisco-- after working for 18 frustrating months attempting to implement Cisco's AVVID systems-- and 18 months into project-- still had not connected all 11 sites (VA, CA, FL, KS, OR, AZ). They threw the Cisco system out (luckily receiving their money back from Cisco) and instead installed AltiGen at all their locations.
- Craft Diston's main goal was to reduce long-distance charges, which prior to AltiGen used to be about $13,000 a month. Now, with AltiGen-it is about $4,000. That is an annual savings of $108,000!
- Plus, the equipment and installation for Cisco was priced at $350,000-- with AltiGen, the total cost was $80,000, a one-time savings of $270,000!
- A major high point for Craft Diston is they don't need an telecom technician to come in to do moves, adds, changes and that saves even more money. This is a boon to companies trying to reign in their IT costs.
- They run a plethora of info between and among sites--- from sales orders to inventory management to transferring glass, communicating with plants and distributors. They have 9 manufacturing facilities that are for shower doors, as well as industrial boilers. On average, they communicate with 5-6 plants per day from headquarters in Wichita. They pump out 100-200 shower doors a day.
- Now, managers at each location can go into the inventory system and log on, and check where needed parts are located. PLUS - now with VoIP, no more dial-up. It used to take 3 hours to research and write a report-- now takes 3 minutes to write and transfer files. So the AltiGen technology is also increasing the company's overall productivity.
The Craft Diston story shows how with AltiGen you can get so much more with less.
Customer Profile
Craft Diston Industries is a growing shower door, tub enclosure and mirror closet door manufacturer with five manufacturing plants located across the United States. They manufacture shower doors for glass shops, specialty bathroom suppliers, and installers that provide their products to the public. Striving for excellence and dedicated to top-quality workmanship, Craft Diston Industries takes pride in building "The Best Shower Doors in the Country" and is continually expanding and improving its product lines.
Over the past 40 years, millions of Craft Diston tub and shower doors have been produced and installed in homes across the United States, Canada and Latin America. In addition to the five manufacturing plants, Craft Diston has three distribution centers and includes two subsidiaries: Architectural Art Manufacturing Inc., maker of expansion joint cover systems, and Superior Boiler Works Inc. an internationally known firetube boiler maker, in operation since 1930.
Telephony Challenge
To unify Craft Diston, save money, and network eleven locations with VoIP.
Craft Diston Industries has been so successful over the years that they have now expanded operations to include over eleven locations all across the country. To improve the efficiency and enhance the communication within their business, they first implemented a single network that linked all eleven office locations together. They then were challenged to find a telephone system that could also be networked between all their office locations and support the needs of the entire organization. Craft Diston evaluated many different IP telephone systems in search of a solution that would meet their requirements. Initially, Craft Diston chose to purchase a 100% IP, enterprise telephony solution from a major networking equipment manufacturer, based on the promise that it would solve their multiple-site, telephony challenges.
In short, the implementation was a disaster. The enterprise system was so complex and cumbersome to implement that after eight months, only nine out of the eleven sites had been installed. The complex architecture used call-processing servers connected to Ethernet switches, which in turn were connected to external gateways, which were then connected to the IP phones. Additionally, the call processing servers were still dependant on more external servers to provide basic telephony applications like voicemail, auto attendants and contact centers. In their specific implementation, there were two master call processing systems. All other systems, servers and users at all the other office sites were dependent on these two master call processing systems. In this architecture, when the master systems crashed, as they did more than once a week, not only would it take down that one location, but would take down half of their locations around the country as well. Ultimately, the system was pulled out and the manufacturer agreed to take the system back.
Back to the Drawing Board
Almost seven months and one million dollars later, Craft Diston Industries was essentially back to the drawing board, looking again for an IP telephony solution to meet the needs of their multi-site communication requirements. Now that Craft Diston felt more experienced in the phone system evaluation and purchasing processes, they added an additional requirement that the system be efficient in its architecture to facilitate a successful implementation. Network Innovations, a Value Added Reseller specializing in voice and data solutions who had had been assisting Craft Diston with their Network administration, introduced Craft Diston to the AltiGen Solution. Craft Diston immediately recognized the benefits of AltiGen's Distributed Intelligent Networking Architecture (DINA). This architecture is the foundation of every AltiGen telephone system and is extremely beneficial when implementing a phone system in a multi-site environment. In the end, Craft Diston choose AltiGen's IP PBX as the telephone system solution upon which they would network, integrate, and unify their entire organization.
Installed AltiGen Solution - Success at last
What took the competition over seven months to only partially install, Network Innovations was able to install the AltiGen solution in all of Craft Diston's eleven locations in less than a month! Eight locations were installed with an on site AltiGen telephone system and three sites were installed and fully supported with remote IP phones. In less than a month, Craft Diston Industries had eleven locations around the country installed and working with rock solid AltiServ systems. AltiGen's distributed architecture not only provided Craft Diston the reassurance that each system could operate independent of all other locations, it also provided the flexibility to integrate each location together via Voice over IP, to operate and be managed as one single, integrated system.
Each Craft Diston site has been installed running AltiWare OE 4.5 and is utilizing AltiGen's T1/PRI technology. All offices have been implemented and are networked together with AltiGen's award winning VoIP functionality. This has enabled Craft Diston to unify all interoffice calling, call routing functionality, voice mail distribution and system wide extension synchronization. For example, employees now need only to simply dial an extension to reach another co-worker anywhere in the country instead of having to remember the area code and number when dialing another office location.
Additionally, to improve overall customer service, Craft Diston has implemented a Customer Service center at their Hialeah, FL site. Using AltiGen's integrated Contact Advantage Software, the AltiGen systems is able to effectively deliver calls to the appropriate customer service representative and improve the efficiency with which all calls are processed. Finally, to improve the productivity of the other staff members, Craft Diston installed AltiGen's AltiView desktop client software application for each user. For each live receptionist, AltiGen's AltiConsole operator attendant supports the efficient handling of all incoming or overflow calls to each location within the system.
Feedback, Benefits and Results
The primary goal Craft Diston Industries was looking to achieve with the purchase of a new phone system was to link all eleven locations together over one existing frame network. With AltiServ IP-PBXs installed, Craft Diston has benefited from improved productivity and a reduction in their overall communications costs. With all eleven sites utilizing Voice over IP, Craft Diston has drastically cut down their communication costs. "Since our small distribution centers have only two telephones each, we installed IP phones at those locations to avoid the implementation cost of an entire phone system. AltiGen's VoIP implementation was able to run over the existing frame relay WAN that we already had connected to each office. So not only did we save money by not having to upgrade our entire data infrastructure upgrade, we are now saving over $20,000 a month on long distance as a result of implementing AltiGen's VoIP technology at all 11 office locations," stated Jesse Santana, Craft Diston's Director if IT. Craft Diston now leverages their current internal IT resources, allowing them to easily manage all locations remotely from the main office. The training they received from the local AltiGen reseller Network Innovations now allows them to have full control of the system internally, calling for technical assistance only when needed. According to Jesse Santana, "I can now manage all aspects of the system and can make the basic Moves, Adds, and changes myself. Additionally, using AltiGen's DINA multi site management tool, I can now conveniently and cost effectively manage all 11 sites from one centralized office location."
Advanced Customer Service
Craft Diston Industries also recognized the benefit of implementing advanced features such as Voice over IP and Contact Center functionality. To improve their customer service, Craft Diston implemented a customer service contact center in their Hialeah, FL site. Utilizing AltiGen's productivity enhancing Contact Advantage product, they began their contact center with only a few agents, and are already looking to expand on the success. Jesse Santana emphasized that Craft Diston strives to, "empower our employees through better communication tools. Our employees are now able to tune their own telephone extension settings directly to their needs." AltiGen supports voice mail synchronization between all locations, and the employees extensively utilize voicemail distribution lists, workgroups, virtual extensions, and AltiGen's One Number Access functionality. Jesse Santana concluded that, "AltiGen has delivered on everything it promised. It has scaled with our business, it is very easy to manage and I have been able to quickly set up the system functionality needed to improve customer service while still cutting our overall communications costs."
Dealer Value
Network Innovations, Inc. has been a long time Authorized AltiGen Reseller in Kansas for over five years. Their dedication to AltiGen and commitment to excellence is the foundation for their tremendous success delivering comprehensive telecommunication solutions. Network Innovations is a one-stop shop for voice, data, and Internet integration solutions. They have been assisting Craft Diston Industries with their telecommunication and data networking requirements for over three years. Craft Diston's Director of IT, Jesse Santana, indicated that, "Network Innovations is very knowledgeable about the AltiGen product. They gave us the flexibility, freedom and training to effectively make our own Moves, Adds, and Changes (MACs). This saves Craft Diston both time and money." Jesse Santana concluded, "Network Innovations is extremely responsive and efficient. What took the competition over a year to try and install, only took Network Innovations less then three weeks to implement in our company with the AltiGen solution."