Sangoma Success Stories

Sangoma’s Cloud UC Delivers Turnkey Solution for FAST Technologies

The Customer

Factory Automation & Systems Technologies – That’s the market for which FAST Technologies provides, and their growth is not slowing down. Headquartered in Northern Ireland, FAST Technologies strives to be the preferred choice for custom turnkey manufacturing solutions. With a special focus on automation and machine design, FAST Technologies engineers complete manufacturing automation solutions from prototyping, through production, to packaging and shipping. FAST Technologies counts some of the most advanced companies in the world among their clients and provides the technical solutions they demand, while also serving as an integration partner to allow them to remain focused on their core business purposes.

Business Challenges

Specialising in incredibly sophisticated technology, FAST Technologies was struggling with a phone system they knew had seen better days. Their aging and obsolete system was a legacy digital phone system that relied on old-fashioned digital-to-analog copper line connections. It was becoming increasingly difficult to administer and support, with repair parts gradually becoming impossible to source. More importantly, for a rapidly growing technology company, the obsolete system’s expansion capability was almost non-existent and incredibly expensive. Additionally, the legacy system did not have many common features relied upon by modern businesses. Features such as voicemail, interactive voice response (IVR) technology, and other standard features of Unified Communications phone systems. Relying exclusively on receptionists and old-fashioned methods of message taking and call transferring was not consistent with the advanced technological image that FAST aims to project.

Solutions From Sangoma

FAST Technologies required a system with modern Unified Communications functionality that could keep up with their growth by expanding rapidly, easily, and at a reasonable price. Experienced in advanced technological solutions, FAST thoroughly researched their options and found Sangoma. While reviewing all of the on-premise and cloud solutions available to them, FAST discovered the unique value that Sangoma offers to businesses. Well established with millions of satisfied customers, Sangoma offers both on-premise and cloud deployment types. This enables Sangoma to act as a trusted partner in the process of choosing the best phone system for a particular business. FAST Technologies decided that a Switchvox Cloud phone system hosted by Sangoma was the most logical choice for their business. This was based on the winning combination of robust flexibility and superior value. With a hosted phone system from Sangoma, FAST can easily add new extensions when they need them, while avoiding expensive capital investments in hardware. In fact, FAST was even able to rent the majority of their handsets directly from Sangoma.

The Results

To reduce downtime and increase user confidence in the new system, FAST decided to install the new Sangoma system alongside the old legacy system. This allowed users to continue using the old system until the new system was fully operational and the phone numbers had been ported from the old service provider. FAST was impressed by the professionalism of the Sangoma Cloud OnBoarding team. Described as “helpful,” “responsive,” and “courteous,” the Sangoma team was one of the main reasons FAST decided to implement a Sangoma solution. A full turnkey solution, the time FAST had to invest in deploying their new phone system was minimal as all the preparations were handled by the Sangoma Cloud team. New VoIP switches using existing Cat5/Cat6 cabling along with new IP phones from the Sangoma D-Series were deployed successfully in two days, and the phone numbers were ported in approximately two weeks. By this time, the excited users were so confident in their new system that they immediately removed the old system. Thrilled by the short installation time and minimal hardware and time required, FAST Technologies is now enjoying the modern functionality they were seeking in a new phone system. With an automated directory and IVR, the burden on their receptionists and office staff is greatly reduced, and calls are more efficiently handled. Additionally, they are experimenting with the use of the productivity and collaboration features that came standard on their cloud Unified Communications phone system. These features, such as the Sangoma Connect desktop and mobile client, allow users to stay connected wherever they go with the full power of their phone system.

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