Business Strategy

A move to IP Communications results in increased customer responsiveness and reduced telecommunications costs.

For California-based Curon Medical, making the move to IP Communicaitons provided the tools necessary to enhance its customer responsiveness. With 70 employees, an overseas office in Belgium, and distributors throughout the world, Curon Medical develops, manufactures, and markets proprietary products for the treatment of gastrointestinal disorders.

Curon’s business depends on its ability to answer questions from distributors, patients, hospitals, or physicians in any location at any time. But Curon’s old private branch exchange telephone system did not offer many of the features it needed. For example, employees working remotely were not immediately notified when they had received new voice messages; because Curon’s ability to respond quickly to customers was critical to its success, this was a significant problem for the company. In addition, Curon wanted a messaging system that could send automated pages or e-mails to traveling sales or service staff to let them know that they had missed calls.

Managed Solution Makes Business Sense

After researching its options, Curon turned to Cisco certified reseller Allnet Services for help designing and installing an IP Communications system to be managed by Covad Communications, a Cisco Powered Network service provider. Today, the following benefits enable Curon to meet its customer-responsiveness goals:

• Regardless of their locations, Curon staff members are accessible through their four-digit telephone extensions.
• Calls are automatically forwarded to the mobile phones of traveling employees.
• Employees carry network-enabled PDAs that allow the system to notify them automatically when they receive new voice messages.

Employees can scroll through voice messages on their computers, listening to and responding to the most critical messages first, enhancing their efficiency and productivity.

"The managed IP Communications solution was actually cheaper than our old phone system," says John Vigdal, Curon's director of information systems. "Plus, it saves us close to $2,000 a month in telecommunications charges. We realized it would pay for itself in no time, and it has."