With a history that dates back to 1888, electrical manufacturing company, Hubbell International, triumphed through the industrial revolution by fostering innovation and growth. More than 125 years later, those strategies still stand strong as the company welcomes today’s digital revolution. Telecommunications manager, Jeff Mazzabufi, knew it was time once again for innovation after a series of acquisitions left the company with a disparate set of telephony systems spread across 60+ locations. Mazzabufi needed the simplicity of a single, cloud-based communications platform that would upgrade the entire enterprise quickly.
Mazzabufi knew the key to success was trading capital expenses and legacy system maintenance costs for easy-to-administer cloud solutions and managed services. With the benefits of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), he was confident that he could earn the CFO’s stamp of approval as long as he could identify a partner who could help him achieve two primary goals:
- Standardization: Reduce a variety of premise-based PBX phone systems across 60+ locations down to one cloud-based solution that would serve all needs across the globe
- Productivity: Improve communications efficiency for all employees and contact centers, including 40 acquired companies
Solution: Standardization Meets Flexibility
After working with ATC to review seven different vendors offering three different platforms, Mazzabufi and the executive team selected Masergy. The UCaaS solution could deliver global standardization while still providing flexible network connectivity options that could be optimized to the company’s changing needs and cater to any new locations in the future. Professional services were also attractive in helping Hubbell survey each location and provide precise documentation for the implementation.
Today, Masergy provides both voice and network service for Hubbell’s domestic offices as well as a few international ones. Taking a phased or hybrid deployment approach for more than 6,500 endpoints, the UCaaS implementation brought standardization and operational simplicity to the enterprise.
Moving forward, Hubbell has the flexibility to run any new cloud communications implementations over Masergy’s high-performance network, over their existing network, or over any broadband connection. Those options will be key to helping the company achieve IT agility for years to come.
Result: Productivity Savings and Top-Quality Service Come Standard
Since the implementation, Hubbell has recognized increased productivity and workforce mobility, not to mention the advantages of offloading real-time voice traffic to the Masergy network, where SLAs guarantee top-quality user experiences. Today, employees connect via any device anywhere in the world at any time, and Mazzabufi has traded capex financial models for operational expenses that increase predictability and simplify budgeting. The first phase of implementation generated a savings of nearly $2.5M in capital cost avoidance.
Additionally, standardization and the consolidation of systems and services across 60+ locations has enabled Hubbell to eliminate much of the administrative duties and maintenance costs associated with supporting multiple on-premise PBX systems. Based on the first phase of implementation, productivity savings are estimated at $400,000 per year. With the consistency of telephony services, the company could also consolidate their contact center operations under a single service platform.
“Our phased approach to rolling out cloud communications to all our locations has really paid off. We’re seeing improved performance with low maintenance,” said Mazzabufi. “Moving to a single, global network is icing on the cake.”
The operational offload creates a sense of freedom for Mazzabufi and his team as they now have the productivity to focus on spurring innovation.
“We are no longer in the phone system ownership business,” said Mazzabufi. “Nor are we in the business of supporting and maintaining a slew of disparate systems. The Masergy team has consolidated all our communications to the cloud, and their help desk handles support requests for all of our locations and users.”
Recognized Results
- Savings from Phase One: $2.5 million in capital cost avoidance and $400,000/yr in operational savings
- Vendor/Systems Management: consolidated disparate phone systems across 80+ locations into one, global solution with voice, network, and cloud contact center from one partner
- Quality of Service: increased up-time, lowered maintenance costs, and improved application visibility
- Productivity: simplified administration with IT staff time reallocated to strategic projects
With a customer portal presenting real-time unified communications and network analytics, Mazzabufi has clear visibility into the performance of the voice traffic as well as a single point of accountability for any needed bandwidth optimization or operations support. Plus, he’s on a first-name basis with the Masergy team, which has paved the way for partnership growth.
With confidence in the relationship, Hubbell began adding on Masergy’s suite of Cloud Contact Center solutions to enable omni-channel interactions with its customers. Now, its contact center is maximizing the customer experience by routing all customer interactions to agents using a single, global queue in the cloud.
