When it became clear that they were outgrowing the telephone switch in their Hudson administrative headquarters, they called S&F. We began by spending time understanding predecessor bank Hudson River Bank and Trust's problems with their current system, and how their business plans impacted their telecom needs. HRBT expected that the best approach would be to upgrade their existing equipment, but it turns out that by replacing their switch with a new system from Vodavi they could get better voice mail functionality and programming flexibility - for less.

A First Niagara Small Business Lending Vice President and Team Leader, notes, "We are so pleased with the quality of service and value from S&F that we are using them for any telecommunications work in many of our branches."

First Niagara's administrative office.

Case Study: Northeast Orthopedics

Northeast Orthopedics is a rapidly expanding medical practice in Albany. Their general manager, Alan Okun, called us when he felt it was time to reduce their service costs. They wanted to be able to manage the system themselves, and they wanted us to be able to remotely program changes to both give them more flexibility. The result has been significant savings with up-to-date technology.

Another challenge was voice mail. They wanted to ensure that it was not cumbersome; Northeast has a very high call volume, and they wanted to make sure that each caller was handled well.

We started by taking them to Hudson River Bank and Trust (which was later acquired by First Niagara) to observe their phone and voice mail systems, which served as a starting point for designing Northeast's system.

Northeast decided not to install voice mail until two weeks after their new switch was installed to minimize the number of new things people had to learn. Training on the new phone system started at S&F the week before when we trained the trainers. The morning after the installation S&F's training coordinator had instructions on each trainer's desk, and she gave each person personal instruction on how to use their new phone. She repeated the personal training two weeks later when the administrative / supervisory team began using voice mail.

Debbie Joslin, Northeast's Operations Manager recently commented, "We went with S&F because our business is so dependent on the quality of our phone service, and we knew from talking to other S&F clients that they would give us the training and support we need. We're glad we did." Alan Okun added, "My concern was reducing ongoing costs, and simplifying making changes. The solution S&F has given has has greatly exceeded our expectations."