4-page Case Study - Posted 5/20/2008

Views: 344

Rate This Evidence:

Canada Cartage

Transport Company Improves Productivity with Unified Communications Solution

Canada Cartage, a logistics firm with 25 locations across Canada, was outgrowing its communications infrastructure. The company’s mix of outdated telephone systems didn’t provide consistent service, and key staff members couldn’t easily locate one another for collaboration. The company worked with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner LegendCorp to implement a unified communications solution based on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The solution meshed with the existing infrastructure at Canada Cartage and overcame challenges such as connecting with a complex Private Branch Exchange telephone system. Canada Cartage anticipates reduced costs associated with travel and long-distance phone charges. Sales teams can also work together more effectively by using features that turn instant-messaging conversations into group conference calls that even include shared whiteboards.

Situation

Canada Cartage is a logistics and warehousing company based in Toronto. Founded in 1914 as a family-owned business, the company offers a complete range of transportation services and specializes primarily in Customer-Domiciled Dedicated Fleets. Under this arrangement a company outsources its transportation and logistics operations to Canada Cartage, which was one of the first carriers to offer this service to Canadian enterprises. Now one of the largest carriers in the country, the company supplies dedicated fleet and warehousing solutions to more than 60 companies.

Presence awareness in Office Communications Server 2007 helps us to communicate and plan more effectively…. When I need resources from another office, I can instantly see who is available to help.  Mo Eisen Vice President of Information Technology Canada Cartage

In recent years, Canada Cartage found that its communications needs were outpacing the capabilities of its communications infrastructure. The company relied on a Nortel Business Communications Manager (BCM) 400 Private Branch Exchange (PBX) for its telephony services, along with a variety of third-party services and products from local telecommunications companies across Canada. The business grew rapidly, particularly through acquisition, and the system’s capacity was strained to its limits. Much of the company’s communications infrastructure was out of the IT department’s control, making it difficult to manage costs. Another problem was the poor voice quality offered by some of the local telecommunications companies in the remote locations where Canada Cartage has offices. “In a business like ours, many employees spend a lot of time on the road. Poor communications made it difficult at times just to locate people,” says Eisen. “It was frustrating to have no option except to leave a message if someone was away from the office, or to have to travel to another office if you needed to meet in person.”

Canada Cartage became interested in new technologies that integrate voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and video conferencing in one unified communications solution.

Solution

Canada Cartage researched unified communications solutions from four major vendors. The company believed that it had reached a conclusion about which solution to deploy—until it learned about Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007.
 
“When Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 came into the picture, it changed our whole thought process about unified communications,” says Eisen. “Microsoft products integrate so well that we questioned the value of implementing another vendor’s solution in our environment when we could just install Office Communications Server 2007 and the integration would be built in.”

Canada Cartage was also influenced by the prospect of significant cost savings. “The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 solution is a lot less expensive for us because it installs on standard equipment,” Eisen explains. “That makes deployment and maintenance much less costly, as opposed to solutions that run on proprietary hardware.”

In May 2007, Canada Cartage met with its Microsoft account representative and with experts from LegendCorp, a company that specializes in end-to-end technology solutions for business. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the Canada Cartage communications environment, the Microsoft unified communications road map, and the potential benefits of Office Communications Server 2007 to Canada Cartage operations. While presenting the possibilities of a Microsoft communications solution, LegendCorp was able to speak from firsthand experience: as a member of the Microsoft Voice Partner Program, LegendCorp had implemented the Microsoft unified communications solution internally earlier that year. It was the first partner in Canada to deploy the solution and complete all of the milestones necessary to achieve the program’s Verification Complete requirement.

When Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 came into the picture, it changed our whole thought process about unified communications. Microsoft products integrate so well that we questioned the value of implementing another vendor’s solution.  Mo Eisen Vice President of Information Technology Canada Cartage

Working with LegendCorp, Canada Cartage began its unified communications deployment in early July 2007. The solution consisted of Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 installed on the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition operating systems, integrated with the company’s existing Active Directory® service. The team installed Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 on users’ workstations and tested a variety of voice over IP (VoIP) devices and Windows Mobile® phones in the pilot phase. The team also deployed the first Microsoft RoundTable™ conferencing and collaboration devices in Canada. RoundTable offers synchronized voice and video conferencing with a 360-degree panoramic view of everyone in the conference room.

The team tested the solution in a consolidated topology with three Dell server computers. The server that ran Office Communications Server 2007 and the Mediation Server were deployed internally. The Mediation Server, which provides Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and PBX interoperability for Office Communications Server 2007, was connected to an IP gateway. This connection bridged the Office Communications Server 2007 environment to the existing Nortel BCM 400 PBX. The Office Communications Server 2007 Edge Server served as an Access Edge Server and Audio/Video Edge Server. It was installed in the perimeter network (also known as DMZ, demilitarized zone, and screened subnet) to facilitate remote user access and external meeting scenarios. A single Mediation Server was installed at the Canada Cartage head office with an AudioCodes Mediant 1000 VoIP Media Gateway that has two T1 spans.

The project team chose to perform a staged rollout rather than deploy and activate everything at once. According to Andy Papadopoulos, President of LegendCorp, “Office Communications Server 2007 is not a rip-and-replace solution, nor do you have to turn on all of its features on day one. One of the mistakes that a lot of vendors can make is to turn everything on at once. This can overwhelm and confuse people in the organization and make the deployment very complicated. We began by showing Canada Cartage what its new communications environment would look like. Then we phased in the solution in a manageable way, adding modules as the client saw fit.”

One of the project’s notable achievements was the successful implementation of Office Communications Server 2007 with the Nortel BCM 400 PBX. The PBX configuration at Canada Cartage was highly complicated, with two BCM devices that run in parallel with different versions of software and connected T1 lines.

The pilot deployment, completed in December 2007, was rolled out to 20 users. In the future, Canada Cartage will extend the solution to 500 office-based employees in 25 locations across Canada. It also plans to build a redundant system at its data center in Winnipeg to provide business continuity and disaster-recovery capabilities.

Benefits

Office Communications Server 2007 helped Canada Cartage extend the capabilities of its existing IT environment by providing an integrated software solution. With the many communication and long-distance conferencing options that the solution provides, Canada Cartage expects decreased travel for meetings to result in reduced operating costs. Locating fellow employees for collaboration is easier, and individual workflow is smoother. Users can communicate and collaborate in a unified and highly flexible environment, increasing operations efficiency.

Integration with Existing IT Assets

The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 solution is a lot less expensive for us because it installs on standard equipment. That makes deployment and maintenance much less costly, as opposed to solutions that run on proprietary hardware.  Mo Eisen Vice President of Information Technology Canada Cartage

Because Office Communications Server 2007 does not require a “rip-and-replace” approach to deployment, Canada Cartage was able to extend the capabilities of its existing environment, rather than invest time and money to implement an entirely new system.

“Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 connects everything an organization runs on,” says Papadopoulos. “Customers can integrate the solution with their existing software and run it on their existing hardware. If they want to keep using PBX features that overlap with the Microsoft solution’s functionality, that’s fine. They don’t give up anything: Office Communications Server 2007 works on the network they already own.”

Reduced Travel and Telephony Costs

With Office Communications Server 2007, Canada Cartage can manage its internal conferencing resources and reduce its dependence on third-party solutions such as WebEx. By providing employees with a richer conferencing experience—including video, file-sharing capabilities, shared desktops, and VoIP communication—Canada Cartage has reduced the need for travel and eliminated external conferencing. The company expects significant savings on the costs that are associated with travel and long-distance phone use.

More Efficient Communication

One of the most daunting challenges in a fast-growing, continent-spanning transportation company like Canada Cartage can be the process of locating fellow employees to exchange information and collaborate on projects.

“Presence awareness in Office Communications Server 2007 helps us to communicate and plan more effectively,” says Eisen. “I’ve got people that work for me across the country who are extremely busy. When I need resources from another office, I can instantly see who is available to help with whatever issue I’m working on at the time.”

More Productive Workflow

Eisen finds that unified communications help to increase his productivity during the workday. “With Office Communications Server 2007, I can manage the flow of incoming information in ways that respect my time and energy. It’s a definite timesaver to have my voice mails in my e-mail inbox. I can see who they’re from and listen to them right there instead of dialing in. All of my contacts are in one place and accessible through my mobile phone and my workstation, so I don’t have to manage multiple address books. I can see who is calling me and redirect the call to another number or to voice mail. I can also set up automated rules that do the same thing based on my current availability.”

Improved Collaboration Flexibility

The ability to quickly switch from one mode of communication to another is also valuable to Canada Cartage employees, explains Eisen. “When our sales team is working to design a solution for a customer, they can use Office Communications Server 2007 to communicate in the manner that best suits the situation. With the click of a button, a two-person instant-message conversation can easily expand into an audio conference that has a shared whiteboard for more intense collaboration. As users become accustomed to it, I can envision this agile way of working together spreading throughout the company to every area of the business.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information by using the World Wide Web, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/

For more information about LegendCorp products and services, call (416) 465-4540 or visit the Web site at:
http://www.legendcorp.com/

For more information about Canada Cartage products and services, call (905) 564-2115 or visit the Web site at:
http://www.canadacartage.com/

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office 

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published May 2008