VoIP: Scalable, Flexible & Compatible

From the June 2006 issue of Communications News

Laurel Grocery IT manager John Hendrickson understood that the company needed to identify a way to use technology to streamline communications, preserve its resources, minimize travel and enhance the service it delivers to customers.

If you have ever bought a gallon of milk, a roll of film, a can of soup or a bag of nuts from an independent grocer in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia, Indiana or Ohio, chances are that product was supplied by the Laurel Grocery Co. of London, Ky. More than just a merchandise warehousing operation, Laurel Grocery provides end-to-end business resources to its more than 400 independent grocery store customers.

Since it was founded in 1922 by the Griffin and Chestnut families, who still retain full ownership of the company, Laurel’s focus on its customers’ success has enabled the company to grow, and continues to shape philosophy in providing responsive and comprehensive support to its grocery store customers.

Laurel’s customer-centric activities extend beyond simply providing an inventory of some 23,000 grocery and other products to its network of retailers. To help ensure its customers’ success, Laurel provides a level of expertise and sophistication in grocery store operations that is comparable to the support large chain stores receive from their central offices, such as accounting and payroll services.

Independent grocers can take advantage of Laurel’s insurance and financial services program to offer their employees health insurance, pension programs and other employee benefits. In addition, Laurel retail consultants help stores with marketing, promotions and merchandising, while Laurel engineering and design experts provide guidance to grocers regarding their physical facilities, such as store layout, refrigeration and freezers.

The provision of these services requires frequent and efficient communication between the company’s several sites and its customers. There are always promotions and price changes to review, operational issues that need to be discussed, and a host of other issues that can surface at any time. Handling these critical matters expediently affects the financial and operational performance of both Laurel and its customers.

“The very foundation of our success is fast and efficient communication with our customers,” explains Jim Buchanan, president and chief executive officer for Laurel Grocery Co. “On any given day, we could hold several conversations with a single retailer regarding pricing, order fulfillment, advertising and a number of other services we provide for our customers. And when you factor in the volume and intensity of these conversations and multiply it by some 400 customers, it is easy to understand how communications plays such a critical role in our company. It is imperative that we maintain a clear communications stream to keep pace with the changing dynamics of our business and to serve the needs of our customers.”

Keeping up that pace in the past was not an easy proposition for Laurel. Due to the limitations with its previous communications system, Laurel employees frequently had to travel to customer sites to train store personnel in such areas as promotions, redemptions and changes in pricing, in addition to retaining staff at the home office to handle incoming calls for placing orders, tracking shipments and managing accounts.

Due to the limitations with its previous communications system, Laurel employees frequently had to travel to customer sites to train store personnel.

It was a cumbersome, costly and inefficient means to conduct business, says John Hendrickson, IT manager for Laurel. He understood that in order to continue to properly serve the company’s retailers, it needed to identify a way to use technology to streamline communications, preserve resources, minimize travel and enhance the service it delivered to customers.

“I learned that our experience was not atypical from other companies that had outgrown their communications platform,” recalls Hendrickson. “We were becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of efficient means to communicate with our customers.

“The grocery retail business is very complex and time-sensitive, full of multiple issues that must be addressed as quickly as possible. We felt that the right technology solution could not only enhance communications with our customers, but could also help negate the growing expense of traveling to customer sites. Our intention was to identify a flexible solution that would address our immediate needs, but also would provide a reliable, cost-effective and scalable platform that could continue to serve us well as our company continues to grow.”

After evaluating products from a number of vendors, Laurel Grocery chose Inter-Tel to supply its new communications solution–including advanced voice-over-IP (VoIP) and IP-powered applications. Another deciding factor was the scalability, flexibility and compatibility of Inter-Tel’s technologies. Hendrickson liked the fact that he could take advantage of emerging products and applications when business dictated, and not be forced into using undesirable or unnecessary technology because of technical constraints.

“We were impressed with the modularity of the Inter-Tel products,” says Hendrickson. “Their approach isn’t to deliver an ‘either-or’ deployment. They gave us a number of options to deploy technology as we need it without affecting the performance of our system. From an operational and budgetary standpoint, this is a benefit to know that our system has the ability to integrate emerging applications and solutions that can help our business maximize performance well into the future.”

To serve as the lynchpin in Laurel’s communications system, Inter-Tel installed its Inter-Tel Axxess converged communications system. The Axxess platform offers organizations a choice among transport options, including VoIP, digital, wireless and analog technologies, which can be implemented separately or in any combination to address their specific needs.

redundant systems

In addition, the Axxess system is designed to handle a robust array of applications that can be equally optimized in any infrastructure the customer chooses. As a result, Axxess enables customers to enjoy both the efficiencies of VoIP communications as well as the powerful applications they depend upon.

Initially, Laurel put in place three Axxess nodes that connect four locations, including the company’s executive offices and its major warehouses. According to Hendrickson, “The nodes behave as one, enabling any call to be seamlessly transferred to the appropriate extension or call group, regardless of location. Additionally, the systems are completely redundant, enabling our communications system to remain live in the event of weather-related outage, power failure or any other issue.”

Hendrickson relied on little more than guesswork to determine if he had enough staff to handle calls during both peak and off-peak hours.

While the Axxess system provides the backbone of the company’s communications system, the real power of the solution resides in several applications that the company uses, particularly Inter-Tel Remote Support and Inter-Tel Call Center Suite software. The former is an IP-powered customer-service and collaboration solution that is integrated into the communications platform, and allows customer service and others to collaborate with users in real time to correct technical and operational problems, direct customers to online resources, and enhance service. Agents and support personnel can remotely view and control a user’s desktop–with their permission–to conduct a number of tasks, such as installing and configuring software, transferring files, sharing documents and co-browsing the Web.

Remote Support plays a practical role for Laurel Grocery in its ongoing efforts to streamline communications with its customers. For example, to facilitate price changes among its customers, the company uses a proprietary software application that enables its retailers to download pricing information and install it on their respective premise-based databases. In years past, personnel at each customer site would have to manually install the software, a complicated, frustrating and time-consuming process that oftentimes resulted in Laurel personnel taking matters into their own hands by traveling to customer sites and correctly re-installing the software in person.

Using Remote Support, Laurel now works with customers on a one-to-one basis to remotely install the software and to train on the use of the application–all from company headquarters in Kentucky.

“In the past, installing the pricing application usually translated into a full day at the customer site to configure the software and train the staff. It was a very expensive and laborious process,” notes Hendrickson. “Now, we’re able to install the application, train the employees and answer any questions in a fraction of the time. From an efficiency and cost perspective, this application has paid for itself many times over.”

In addition, as a full-service resource, Laurel technicians are frequently asked to assist customers with addressing other computer-related problems, such as virus eradication and protection. Remote Support is the solution of choice to remotely resolve these and other technical issues.

software manages calls

Just like any other efficiently run business, Laurel Grocery tries hard to keep tabs on how well it processes calls from both customers and other suppliers. To ensure incoming calls are properly managed, the company relies on Inter-Tel’s Call Center Suite, a package of call-accounting, monitoring, routing and reporting tools.
Prior to the installation of the suite, Hendrickson relied on little more than guesswork to determine if he had enough staff to handle calls during both peak and off-peak hours. With the reporting tools available in Call Center Suite, however, the company now uses hard data to monitor call activity and more efficiently allocate resources to ensure that customer inquiries are answered quickly and completely. The product also provides real-time call recording for quality-assurance purposes, as well as for measuring agent productivity.

In addition, through Inter-Tel’s managed services program, Laurel receives a full communications solution–including hardware, software, business-specific applications, carrier services, data provisioning, and service and support–for a predetermined monthly fee.
According to Hendrickson, this relationship offers the best of both worlds. “As the IT manager, I am most concerned with the free software upgrades, continuous technical support and predictable, incremental system growth. What our executives like best is the predictable cost of the relationship. I can go to them at the beginning of each budget year with one set figure for our telecommunications needs, and they know I won’t be back asking for more. That makes all of us happy.”

As he looks to meet future needs, Hendrickson is already making plans to add more technology to the mix by integrating Inter-Tel Web Conferencing into Laurel’s communications solution. This IP-powered conferencing tool will permit the company to share documents, such as spreadsheets, fliers and other promotional materials, with its family of retailers. Coupled with Remote Support, Hendrickson anticipates that these tools will be invaluable in the company’s efforts to enhance customer service through IP communications.

Using VoIP technology and advanced collaboration applications, packaged through the managed services program, Laurel Grocery has been able to cut travel in half. In addition, the capability to accurately monitor and predict call volume has resulted in more adequate staffing to address customer inquiries, and Laurel’s ability to easily integrate new applications and seamlessly add locations allows the company to serve its customers more efficiently.

“This solution has made all of our jobs a lot easier,” concludes Hendrickson. “We are now able to leverage new technologies that have greatly improved the ways we can serve our customers, while, at the same time, reducing the time and money spent on travel to customer sites. And the program has allowed us to save a substantial amount of money.”