“In addition to reducing costs and providing a great quality system, when you work with Commio you get people that can help you far and beyond anybody else in the industry.”
Mark Grigsby
Operations Manager, Vobis Software
Vobis Software, part of PCI Internet & Telecom Solutions, is an innovative, full-service telecommunications solutions provider serving Oregon’s small to medium-sized business and enterprise firms. Their expertise coupled with quality, low-cost telecom service providers like Commio enables them to offer competitive, customized telephony services for businesses of any size.
Opportunities
- Vobis’s rural, multi-campus healthcare client struggled with an outdated phone system lacking modern features
- Cut the high cost of telephony infrastructure and voice minutes to allow expanded spending on quality care and patient services
- Improve the quality and capabilities of the system to meet the needs of their healthcare client
Solution
- Remove legacy telephony hardware
- Replace with modern SIP trunking and cloud communication capabilities
- Integrate Commio as the health system’s inbound and outbound voice provider
- Install modern handsets with expanded capabilities: dial by name, voicemail, more
Outcomes
- 50% reduction in telephony costs
- Deliver higher-quality calls
- Dynamic failover to deliver 99.99% up-time
- Commio support team provisions and ports numbers in record time
- Tools to research call issues in real-time
Goal: Modernize an Expensive, Outdated Phone System
Mark Grigsby is in his 35th year of designing and managing telecommunications installations for businesses at any scale. As Operations Manager at Vobis Software in Coos Bay, Oregon, he’s adept at bringing modern software and cloud tools to bear on telephony projects.
“What I tell people about our area out here is we… still sweep dirt floors,” Mark said. “We still have people with old switch connections, we still have people with frame relay. We can’t get a Basic Rate Interface (BRI), connected to a customer here. We are still in the 1980s and 1990s for technology.”
Mark led a team tasked with helping Lower Umpqua Hospital District – the cornerstone healthcare system in several rural communities in Oregon – find ways to cut their telephony costs to expand patient care services, plus address staff and patient requests for a more modern phone system.
“The system was spending $8,000 a month to get mediocre service that was missing important features,” Mark said. “They were paying $4,000 for 4 Primary Rate Interfaces (PRIs), about $3,000 in voice minutes, $1 per phone number, plus 10 cents a minute for long-distance. It added up fast, and every dollar matters out here.”
“Our goal was to provide a rural community health system with all the benefits of a metropolitan installation and save money every month. The healthcare system was spread out; the regional hospital that they work with is 35 miles away. And every call in this area is going to be long-distance.”
Solution: Install SIP & thinQ’s Inbound & Outbound Voice
“We cut their bill by more than 50% after replacing their system with SIP trunking and adding thinQ,” Mark said. “You’re a significant part of their daily operational savings. Plus we’re providing services they could not get from their previous system – dial by name, voicemail, voicemail to email transcription, and a lot more.”
Mark explained that Vobis includes Commio in their installations not only to get high-quality inbound and outbound calling but to leverage the company’s cost advantages. “You guys negotiate with carriers every day. You give me the ability to pick and choose who’s upstream, so I always get the best pricing, flexibility for routing, and redundancy. I don’t need multiple carriers to provide failover, because with thinQ it’s built-in.”
“It takes me about 60 seconds to reroute an entire dial plan. Everything from 800 numbers to local prefixes, long-distance prefixes and international,” Mark said. “During the porting process, Commio’s support team went the extra mile and then some, to help us identify where the hold-ups were. We were able to quickly resubmit numbers to keep the transition on track,” Mark said. “The information exchange, the transparency, the understanding of the entire process that the thinQ support staff has, that’s one of the most valuable things that you have.”
“In addition to reducing your costs and providing a great quality system, when you work with thinQ you get people that can help you far and beyond anybody else in the industry,” Mark said.
Ready to modernize your communications? Want to decrease monthly telephony costs? We’re here to make it happen. Get a no-obligation demo and talk to a thinQ expert today.
