Based outside Detroit, Michigan, and in New Delhi, India, VEST, Inc. is an engineering software developer with shared business functions in both offices. Its software is used in the design of off-highway machinery, hydraulics and industrial machines.
 
VEST pioneered overnight and weekend engineering design services by effectively coordinating work across time zones. Because of its reputation for high quality and on-time delivery, major North American OEMs have turned to VEST for ‘around the clock’ project turnaround.
 
Challenge  
Known for their customer-focused approach, VEST engineers and designers must be able to communicate with each other and their worldwide clients even though they are on opposite sides of the globe. “Our challenge was to have a communication system in which calling someone internally on the other side of the aisle was identical to calling someone on the other side of the world. We also wanted customers to be able to call any VEST engineer by dialing one global contact number, regardless of where the engineer was geographically located,” said VEST co-founder, Shruti Raina.
 
Global collaboration is a great idea, but it was an expensive proposition for VEST, which inherited an inadequate phone system when it moved into its Detroit-area offices in September 2003. Every overseas and long-distance call was a toll call, adding up to thousands of dollars a month in phone bills, plus it was often difficult to make a connection. VEST also wanted personnel in India to answer the phone when the Detroit office was closed.
 
The antiquated phone system also created another kind of hurdle for the global organization, according to VEST co-founder Yudi Raina. “Communication difficulties create psychological barriers for us and our customers.”
 
VEST needed a solution that would unify the two offices and provide seamless communication between employees and customers, no matter where they were located. “Saving money on long-distance charges was definitely a goal,” said Yudi Raina, “but more importantly, we needed a strategic solution to our corporate unification need.”
 
Solution  
After examining proposals from several vendors, VEST chose NEC Associate, Communications Technologies Inc. (CTI), to handle the integration project. “We told CTI personnel what we wanted. They understood what we were trying to do, and they went the extra mile by helping us set up a VoIP demo between Detroit and Delhi. They were very comfortable to work with and wanted to do whatever it took to make this thing work,” Shruti Raina said.
 
CTI preprogrammed a router and NEC VoIP phones and sent them to India where they were plugged into a DSL connection at the Delhi office. “CTI set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network), hosted the IP hardware and made calls over the Internet between CTI’s office and VEST’s U.S. and India offices. We demonstrated conference, voice mail, intercom and trunk calls using lines that terminated at our office,” said CTI Sales Engineer Jeff Allen.
 
“The customer saw demos by Nortel, Cisco and Avaya. They chose the NEC Aspire because the voice quality was superior, the feature set on the telephone was the same as what they were used to seeing in the U.S., the Aspire telephone was easier to use and the pricing was very competitive,” Allen added.
 
CTI installed an Aspire S equipped for four lines and four DID (Direct Inward Dial) circuits, which allows for 20 DID numbers. Eight digital NEC Aspire phones were installed in the Detroit office and three NEC Aspire VoIP phones were shipped to India and installed in the Delhi office. “Both offices have the same phone number, but each office has its own extension, so that calls to India or from India are local calls,” Shruti Raina explained.
 
“Everyone has a DID number and DIDs are set up to terminate into a virtual extension that will ring the phones in India for tech support. Also, some of the folks in India have voice mail even if they don’t have a telephone at their desk,” Allen added.
 
Result  
In addition to immediate reductions in VEST’s long-distance bills, the Aspire VoIP solution has delivered tangible improvements to VEST’s project turnaround time. Collaboration between VEST and its customers is so much easier now, resulting in more cost-effective solutions and greater customer satisfaction.
 
According to Yudi Raina, the intangible results are more important than the tangible ones. “The Aspire IP solution helps us work as one seamless unified organization. It breaks the psychological barrier of having different offices in different time zones, and it helps the customer see us as one organization. The experience of pressing an intercom button and speaking to someone around the world eliminates geographic barriers.”
 
The technology has worked so well for VEST that it is now planning to expand the VoIP solution to its network of sales agents in Germany, South Africa and New Zealand who will be connected to the two VEST sites with the NEC VoIP solution. The technology enables VEST to translate into reality its strategy of building a distributed but unified organization. The Aspire S system will allow VEST to communicate between offices on many continents with the features and customer service functions normally reserved for a much larger company.