In Search of Excellence…

Presenting the 2008 Internet Telephony (News - Alert) Excellence Award Winners

The editorial staff of INTERNET TELEPHONY® magazine is proud to announce the winners of the 2008 INTERNET TELEPHONY® Excellence Awards. These companies are as varied as there are products that fit under the IP telephony umbrella. In fact the only thing more varied than the vendors serving their customers are the customers themselves. And, as we can see from the following companies, they are increasingly turning to IP Communications solutions to build their businesses. This year’s crop of award winners submitted case studies featuring a wide array of end users. For example:

A network design company was able to leverage the solution of one of our winners to take a process that entailed multiple steps and tools, and redundant tasks, often taking up to three weeks to complete and was able to reduce design turnaround time to between two and three days or less, while increasing the professionalism of their deliverables and minimizing oversights and mistakes. They realized a 60 percent reduction in quote preparation time, 90 percent reduction in presales administrative investment time and a 99 percent reduction in design errors.

When the CIO of one of the country’s largest and most prestigious law firms faced significant communication objectives, he began the due diligence on replacing the firm’s aging telephone and voicemail systems. And with 1,800 employees, 2,800 handsets, and monthly long-distance usage of 500,000 minutes, intra-office calling of 100,000 minutes and 200,000 minutes of conferencing, this was no small task.

In the end, by choosing a solution provided by one of our 2008 IT Excellence Award winners, the law firm deployed a unified communications solution with full redundancy and disaster recovery failover features. According to the firm’s CIO, the new system delivers communications technology that meets the firm’s current and future needs at a lower five-year cost than any of the other options that were reviewed. The firm can now equip their partners, lawyers, secretaries and other staff members throughout the country with the latest telecommunications technology in order to enhance productivity and create real value for their clients while sustaining voice quality and lowering their total cost of ownership.

A Florida-based custom manufacturer of high-end team uniforms and sports apparel for the modern athlete was saddled with an antiquated phone system that was causing too many problems and costing too much money to maintain. Today, the company president raves about the solution they purchased form another of our award winning companies.

“Finally getting a real phone system has been great. We were a small company that didn’t have one and the price is better than anything else we saw. When customers are calling in, I think their perception is they’re not dealing with a mom and pop shop. [The new solution] …helps our image and has helped us grow our business. It’s been a good addition to our company.”

Congratulations to the winners of the 2008 INTERNET TELEPHONY® Excellence Awards. These companies all have proven products and services, and most importantly, customers that are willing to speak up and offer themselves as references.

And as we like to remind readers, always check out those customer references. These days — through the efforts of companies such as those gracing our winners’ list — that’s becoming ever-easier to do.

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