Alzheimer’s Foundation of America
Easy to Use, Low Cost Hosted Phone System for Health Care and Social Service market.
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s selects Telco Experts cloud telephony solution.
The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA), headquartered in New York City, has the mission to provide optimal care and services to individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease and related illnesses and to their families and caregivers. AFA was founded in 2002 by Bert E. Brodsky, whose mother lived with Alzheimer’s disease from 1980-1992. Mr. Brodsky’s goal was to make sure that no other family living with Alzheimer’s disease would have to go the journey alone.
Fifteen years later, AFA has grown to a network of more than 2,600 member organizations nationwide that provide direct care and services. To date, AFA has trained more than 13,000 healthcare professionals in dementia-specific care, provided free, confidential memory screenings to nearly 3.5 million people, and provides support, counseling and education to thousands.
The Need
To execute their mission, the AFA team relies on constant communication both internally and externally with their large network of member organizations. A reliable easy to use phone system is mandatory. Also, the AFA team is focused on providing support to those stricken with Alzheimer’s and does not have the luxury of a large team to support their voice and data networking needs. They require a phone system solution that is simple to manage from a supplier that understands their needs, values their business, and provides them timely support.
Their current phone system was getting long in the tooth and in need of a replacement. Rather than incur the significant capital expenditure for another on premises phone system and be weighed down with ongoing operating expenses in maintenance and support that would go along with it, the AFA team set their sights on a hosted telephony solution.
Finding the Right Solution
AFA explored the options in the market and spoke to several different providers of hosted telephony solutions.
During the proposal gathering process, AFA encountered several challenges including:
- AFA is a single location and the demands for their phone system are on the smaller end of the spectrum. Some providers find this size customer too small to be interesting.
- AFA had specific preferences for desk phone types and manufacturers. AFA found that many companies were unable or unwilling to tailor solutions to fit their requirements
- AFA asked qualifying technical questions to make sure they understood the solutions being offered. Many companies were slow responding to questions and providing updated documentation.
- The selection process stretched over many months. Some companies fell by the wayside as they only look for transactional instant gratification opportunities rather than long term business relationships.
Telco Experts Solution Rises to the Top
AFA had engaged Telco Experts from the beginning of their hosted telephony search. In the end, AFA selected Telco Experts solution because:
- Telco Experts solution was simple, easy to use, scaled with their needs, and offered a very affordable price point.
- Telco Experts stayed with AFA through the whole process and assumed the role of trusted advisor rather than a simple supplier.
- Telco Experts was always prompt in responding to requests for information and modifications to the solution. Telco Experts went above and beyond to tailor the solution to AFA requirements.
Telco Experts separated itself from the pack by delivering a scalable, low cost, and easy to use Hosted PBX solution all delivered with white glove treatment. We know we are in good hands with Telco Experts and would make the same decision again
The Solution
Telco Experts installed a 10M Ethernet over Copper (EoC) circuit as the primary path for phone service and backing that up via an existing broadband connection. The EoC circuit also serves as a backup path for their primary Internet connection.
Telco Experts provided its fully managed Hosted PBX solution with state of the art VoIP phones, a scalable Session Border Controller, and Power over Ethernet (POE) Switches. AFA offices are distributed across two floors in the same building. Telco Experts installed managed POE Switches on both floors and connected the two switches using a Link Aggregation Group to assure redundancy between the floors.
The transition to the Telco Experts system was painless and we were up and running in no time!
