Having multiple office or job-site locations often means having to handle each site as if it stood alone. This is the problem that Andrew Babic discovered when he joined Cleveland’s Catholic Cemeteries Association. The nonprofit organization, which incorporates 18 cemeteries in the Diocese of Cleveland, has eight different offices, each of which had a separate phone system.
Not only were they all separately hosted – which means they had to be managed and paid for independently – but there was no way of uniting them together.
“We were using archaic systems. They were old and at the end of their useful life. The functionality was so limited that we couldn’t dial extensions to communicate between sites,” explains Andrew, the Catholic Cemeteries Association’s IT director.
Andrew started looking into a replacement system that could tie all of the association’s phone lines together, but the upfront cost would have ranged from $35,000 to $75,000 (for equipment and installation). That’s when he started to dive deeper to look for other options.
“I had heard about cloud solutions. RingCentral popped up as the leader in the market, so I decided to give it a try,” Andrew says. “The initial cost for setting up RingCentral was significantly less.”
Now that the Catholic Cemeteries Association is using RingCentral Office, a human receptionist no longer needs to direct calls between the organization’s offices. Andrew has set up departments, so callers can determine where their call gets routed. Internal calls, meanwhile, can easily be transferred between locations.
Plus, RingCentral Office’s sequential call forwarding functionality ensures that the Catholic Cemeteries Association’s staffers never miss an important call. “Our employees can be out in the field and calls can be routed directly to their cell phones. About 40 of our employees work in the field, with their cellphones being the only means to reach them,” explains Andrew.
In addition to the new departments and simplified management that Andrew has with his new RingCentral business phone system, the association is saving more than $8,000 a year on phone expenses.
“It’s been a great experience with RingCentral,” Andrew adds. “If someone inherits this job, I know that they won’t run into the troubles that I had to solve.”
Originally published Oct 17, 2013, updated Aug 20, 2021
