The customer

For over 35 years, Able Locksmiths & Security has offered high-quality locksmith and security services to homes and businesses in Australia. A trusted name in security, Able Locksmiths is a family-run operation with a dedicated team of experienced locksmiths able to provide the best solutions for all lock and security needs. They also provide specialist locksmith, security and property maintenance services for property managers across Sydney.

As distributors, they are leading suppliers of high-quality products and accessories to the vending and self storage industries in Australia and New Zealand, used by Coca-Cola, Woolworths, Storage King, National Storage, and Big W. Able Locksmiths prides itself in bringing the highest level of attention to detail for every job, as only a family business can.

Challenges

A thriving locksmithing and security form sought to replace their legacy PSTN phone system with modern Unified Communications functionality. Key requirements for its replacement were:

• A system that could connect multiple locations onto a single on-premise system while maintaining separate billing for a remote office.
• Access to modern Unified Communications features that made handling business calls easier and streamlined.

Solutions

We found the right solution for the right price! This included:

• FreePBX installaed on an on-premise server.
• IP Phones
• Many FreePBX commercial modules to accommodate modern Unified Communications functionality.

Business Challenges

Able Locksmiths were struggling with legacy business phone system equipment and PSTN connections when they determined it was time to upgrade and replace their communications system.

Their system had only very limited management functionality usable for only one core system programming, making any changes to extensions or equipment difficult and inconvenient. Not to mention, they were maintaining a phone system entirely separate from their main phone system to provide communications ability to their remote office with little to no support.

With their business growing and steady work coming in, their legacy phone system simply did not provide the functionality they needed to properly manage their ever-increasing number of inbound calls as the system provided no ability to distribute calls into queues to be answered by the proper person in their office of workshop.

And with business operating two completely separate phone systems, there was no ability to transfer calls internally between the main office and the remote office, making any communications and call transfers between locations unnecessarily difficult.

Accommodating the functionality

A thriving business, Able Locksmiths knew they needed a new phone system that facilitated all the functionality that they were missing while allowing them to have a remote office connected to the main system while still billing their extensions separately from the main office.

In our research, they found a business communications platform that checked all their boxes while remaining affordably within their budget for a new phone system.

To accommodate the functionality their business needed, under our recommendation, Able Locksmiths opted to deploy a FreePBX on a Dell server. This provided the core phone system functionality for the business, then to complement and expand the feature set available to them. We installed a number of FreePBX commercial modules including extension routing, an End Point Manager, interactive voice response, call queues, music on hold, call recording, sate and time conditional call rules, call flow/queue control, and weekly off site system backup.

And to complete their solution, they opted to deploy new IP phones for all their extensions to provide handsets to their employees that offer the tightest possible integration with their phone system and instant access to its robust functionality.

The results

The owners and staff at Able Locksmiths are very satisfied with their full FreePBX solution. Deployment was fast and the provisioning of phones was very easy with the End Point Manager.

The native functionality of the FreePBX made it simple to configure their PBX to the exact requirements and desires of Able Locksmiths, including the abilty to maintain separate extension billing for the remote office location while still staying connected to the central business phone system.

One feature of their new phone system that the good people at Able Locksmiths are enjoying especially is the ease and robust flexibility with which the system and extension changes can be made. With their old system, even the simplest change was arduous and expensive, but now changes can be made on the fly to extensions as well as to inbound call rules using the FreePBX commercial modules.

The ease of using intercom to extensions to make quick announcements and communicate messages is very appreciated and has been a real game changer. Overall, Able Locksmiths are glad they found a complete communications solutions and look forward to seeing their productivity increase as they take advantage of the Unified Communications functionality of their new phone system.