Case Study #2

Newly-Merged Financial Institution

The Challenge:
A Newly-Merged Financial Institution with a Corporate office and 8 branch locations needed to upgrade their telecommunications technology and consolidate their services. Due to the high cost quoted by their current local vendor for a new Avaya IP phone system, the Financial Institution was considering enhancing their over 10-year old Legacy Avaya phone system and voicemail at all of the locations by upgrading the cards and software, and purchasing additional handsets at a cost of approximately $154K. In addition, this Financial Institution was using voice services & pt-to-pt data lines at all locations which were being provided by 3 different carriers at a total monthly cost of $9,773.94, of which $3K was still under contract for 2 additional years.

The Process:
RAK Consulting, Inc. was contacted to review and validate the quoted pricing for Board approval. After reviewing the proposal and meeting with the customer to ascertain their business needs, RAK Consulting recommended a stream-lined RFP process in order to compare new VoIP systems quotes with the upgrade quote to which the customer agreed. With a clear understanding of the customer’s true objectives, RAK Consulting developed the RFP and distributed it to the current Avaya dealer, another Avaya dealer, a Cisco dealer and a Mitel dealer. At the same time, RAK Consulting solicited bids from Paetec, CallOne, at&t, and Cimco for a MPLS network to support a VoIP solution and the current LAN/WAN data requirements. In addition, RAK consulting opened a re-negotiation of the voice contracts with Cimco and solicited bids for the sale of the existing equipment.

The Results:
After conducting the process as well as the negotiation of final pricing, Mitel was selected as they came in with the best overall bid which included unified messaging, call accounting, extension to cellular, and other features that the customer was looking for, but that the other bidders did not include.

With the new system, RAK Consulting was able to redesign the voice architecture and renegotiated the contracted voice services with Cimco providing a monthly savings of $1,767.60. After evaluating the submitted bids by the vendors for the MPLS data network, CallOne was chosen providing an additional $330/month savings. Combined, the voice and data recurring monthly costs were reduced by $2.1K or 21%.

In addition, RAK Consulting was able to “broker” the sale of all the existing equipment for a total of $8.6K and at the request of the Financial Institution, RAK Consulting also performed the project management of the installation to ensure a successful installation.