Packaging-Supplies Company in Search of a Modern Communications Solution Finds the Perfect Fit with RingCentral
We rarely give it much thought, but the packaging of the products we buy every day plays a major role in the cost of those products, our trust in the manufacturer, and the quality of our buying experience.
Few businesses in the world understand the value of proper packaging—to keep costs down, ensure the safe delivery of goods, and even protect the environment—better than IPS Packaging & Automation. The distributor of packaging solutions has become a go-to partner for well-known brands and products around the country. In fact, no matter where you live in the world, chances are you’ve bought a product packaged in IPS Packaging & Automation supplies or with the help of its packaging equipment.
Over its 40-year history, IPS Packaging & Automation has had to innovate to help its customers—in fields as diverse as aerospace and food processing—stay ahead of their competition. One of the company’s strategies has always been to invest heavily in technology to continually improve its processes.
But while the company has implemented many high-tech solutions other packaging suppliers don’t offer, IPS Packaging & Automation focused so much on their customers that one aspect of their internal tech stack slipped through the cracks.
A legacy phone system had the company boxed in
Customer service has always been IPS Packaging & Automation’s top priority—and the company has backed up that philosophy with action. For example, the company knows how important a shipment of packaging supplies is to a manufacturer eager to get its products to the market. So IPS Packaging & Automation has built nearly a dozen distribution centers strategically around the country, and developed its own transportation and logistics operation, to ensure it can rapidly deliver products to customers.
But when it came to the other key area of customer service—being accessible and responsive to customers by phone—IPS Packaging & Automation found itself facing challenges with its on-prem phone system. Those challenges came to a head when the systems’ manufacturer ran into business problems of its own.
Nor was an aging, difficult-to-support phone system the only challenge with IPS Packaging & Automation’s communications environment. As IT Support Specialist Josh Palmer explains: “We also had traditional fax machines at our offices—not the most efficient use of anyone’s time. And we had only a single license for our video conferencing app, so every time someone wanted to host an online meeting, they’d have to come to me to schedule it.”
To make good on its promise of industry-leading customer service, IPS Packaging & Automation needed a more flexible, reliable, and scalable communications solution, ideally one that would consolidate all of these communication services into one integrated platform. The company simply couldn’t continue trying to find creative workarounds for its legacy systems.
Cloud communications: everything they needed in a single package
RingCentral’s cloud communications solution addressed all of these IT challenges. Josh and his team no longer had trouble managing aging phone servers or other hardware—because the system was entirely cloud based and didn’t require any on-prem hardware.
And the first time in its history, IPS Packaging & Automation now had a phone system flexible enough to allow all of its employees to make and take business calls from anywhere, using any internet device. “All they had to do was download the RingCentral app for their laptops or cell phones,” Josh explains, “and our employees could stay connected to each other and our customers from anywhere.”
In fact, RingCentral also solved several other frustrating IT communication challenges for the company. Because the solution includes built-in digital fax capability, Josh’s team was finally able to get rid of the fax machines and dedicated fax lines at each of the company’s locations around the country.
Plus, now instead of having the entire company share a single online-meeting license, IPS Packaging & Automation uses the RingCentral Video service to give all employees the ability to schedule and host their own video conferences, anytime. “That makes it a lot easier for us to have meetings by video whenever we need to,” says Josh, “and it also saves my team a lot of time because we don’t have to intervene anymore every time someone wants to schedule a conference.”
Ready for a disaster nobody saw coming
Although the company was already enjoying the benefits of all-in-one cloud communications long before COVID-19, when the lockdowns forced employees to switch to remote work, having a communications solution that works anywhere proved even more valuable.
“I can’t imagine the nightmare of trying to adjust everyone during the lockdowns if we didn’t have RingCentral,” says Josh. “But all we had to do was make sure everyone had the app on their computer or on their mobile phone. That was it. Everyone was up and running at home… taking customer calls, faxing online, hosting video calls… with no trouble.”