Virtual Office Resource

As a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, Champion Realty provides real estate services in Maryland across eight offices. In addition to being able to communicate with its 250 sales associates and its many customers in these locations, it also has to have direct access to the organization's headquarters. The company announced it is migrating to the cloud with Verizon (News - Alert)'s Virtual Communications Express, to improve the communications and collaboration capability of its workforce while increasing the level of productivity from its associates.

Unlike the traditional on premises-based telephony system Champion Realty had in place, the Verizon solution has a cloud IP PBX and mobile unified communication powered by BroadSoft (News - Alert)'s BroadCloud UC technology.

According to Verizon, Champion Realty was still using a legacy on premises PBX (News - Alert) system that was more than 10 years old at all of the locations. In terms of maintenance and management, IT and administrative staff had to perform any updates or repairs going from location to location.

With Virtual Communications Express, employees will have the same level of access to company resources whether they are at the office or on location throughout Maryland. This gives the real estate company the flexibility to use its workforce with more efficiency.  And as for maintenance, a centrally managed platform brings all the locations together replacing the multisite management process of the legacy system.

"As a flexible, scalable cloud solution, Virtual Communications Express has improved communications and collaboration for our sales associates who need to keep in touch with colleagues, customers and partners while working across multiple offices and across all devices," said Michael Greentree, director of IT at Champion Realty.

Virtual Communications Express also has advanced communications services, including HD voice, auto attendant, "find me, follow me", soft phone support, mobile integration, visual voicemail, simultaneous ring One Number calling, and inter-office extension dialing.

Mobile workers have access to all messages, including faxes, visual voice-mail and more, in one login location along with productivity tools on Apple and Android (News - Alert) devices. This simplifies collaboration between employees by keeping them connected on the go, and when someone is not available, the system finds the best way to get in touch with them through presence intelligence.

Virtual Communications Express adds yet another convenient option by making it available with a pay-as-you-go service to keep costs in check and reduce capacity when it’s not needed.

Eric Sorensen, director, Advanced Communications (News - Alert), Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said, "Virtual Communications Express offers enterprise-grade business communications right out of the box, enabling businesses of all sizes to spend less time managing the complexities of their communications systems and more time focusing on growing their business.