Olympia Management
RingCentral Slashes Olympia Management’s Phone Costs While Improving Remote Office Oversight
Industry
Real Estate
Hq
Albertville, AL
Year founded
2014
Employees
150
Industry
Real Estate
Hq
Albertville, AL
Year founded
2014
Employees
150
RingCentral puts the control in our hands, and that’s a huge benefit we like.
Jason Beaird
System Administrator, OMI
Olympia Management, Inc. (OMI) has more than 90 property complexes located in seven states throughout the Southeast including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
Making housing affordable demands tight control of costs
Initially, for telephone service in its main office, OMI shared an on-premises PBX with its sister company, Olympia Construction. This was a logical first step as the two companies are located in neighboring buildings. OMI’s 90+ property managers purchased residential phone service for their offices. Each office was equipped with two lines, one for phone and one for fax.
OMI Director, Alex Beaver, saw this as a temporary arrangement, in part because the PBX provider was going out of business. More importantly, he knew he could save the company money by consolidating on a single unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution that could be used company-wide. “The margins in our business are really tight,” Beaver explains. “To keep our properties affordable, revenues can’t really increase. So we work hard at controlling expenses. I knew UCaaS could help us there.”
In addition to cost savings, UCaaS was attractive to him because it would give the remote offices the advanced phone functions—such as the ability to easily forward calls or add others to a call—that had previously only been available in the main office.
More functionality at a lower price
OMI’s criteria for a UCaaS system included (1) integration with Google, because the company uses Google G Suite apps, and (2) support for mobile workers, because OMI has regional property managers who are often on the road. RingCentral met the requirements while delivering the advanced communications functionality Beaver wanted at a significantly lower price than what OMI was paying previously.
For example, Beaver was able to replace each remote office’s two phone lines with one RingCentral phone that handles both phone and fax.
Because the remote offices already had internet access, the company sees a savings of 66% to 80% on the cost of the remote offices’ phone service.
“Multiply that by 90+ offices, and it really adds up,” Beaver adds. Also, consolidating on RingCentral means writing one monthly check to pay for phone service, instead of 90 or more—a significant reduction in administrative effort and cost.
RingCentral gives us more oversight, which is another key reason we bought it.
Sandra Jarmon
General Manager, OMI
Benefits beyond cost savings
Cost savings “make the owners happy,” says Beaver, who adds that there are a number of other RingCentral advantages that he and OMI’s System Administrator, Jason Beaird, appreciate.
One is the control they have over the system. “With the PBX, we had to have a laptop and remote in to make any changes, and it took some expertise,” Beaird explains. “RingCentral puts the control in our hands, and that’s a huge benefit we like.”
They also value the increased communications functionality that RingCentral gives the property managers in the remote offices. “I love that they now have the ability to communicate better and work better,” Beaver notes.
Another RingCentral benefit is the visibility it gives OMI management into operations in the remote offices. “With RingCentral reports, we can see how many calls are coming in and all of the managers’ voicemails and whether or not they are checking them,” explains Sandra Jarmon, OMI General Manager. “RingCentral gives us more oversight, which is another key reason we bought it.”
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