C.M. Almy & Son, Inc.

C.M. Almy & Son, Inc. was founded in New York City in 1892 by English master tailor, Charles Mortimer Almy and his son, James. Now with 145 employees and headquartered in Greenwich, CT, C.M. Almy is dedicated to being the world’s best supplier of decorative furnishings, apparel, worship-related products, and gifts to churches, religious institutions, their clergy, and their members. Although the company has its showroom in Old Greenwich and its factory is in Pittsfield, ME, the heart of its retail operation is a catalog sales call center in Greenwich.

“ShoreTel is fast and easy, and this is true for all aspects of the system, from installation to moves, adds, and changes.”
— Jim Johnston, Manager of Information Technology, C.M. Almy.

In early 2004, C.M. Almy had separate Nortel PBX phone systems for its Pittsfield, Greenwich, and Old Greenwich locations. Each location had its own telephone number. With the lease on the Nortel system up for renewal, the company sought an IP-based alternative that would unify its disparate systems into one, while also allowing the use of analog telephones until budget would permit them to be replaced with IP phones. C.M. Almy also needed a system that would streamline and improve the operations of its busy catalog sales call center.

"The other solutions would have required that we swap out all our phones to either IP phones or a different model of proprietary phone than what we had already, which would have been extremely costly.”
— Jim Johnston, Manager of Information Technology, C.M. Almy.

With the help of its integration partner, ShoreTel provided C.M. Almy with six ShoreTel 120 Voice Switches for its three locations, enabling the connection between them to run over a virtual private network (VPN) as opposed to the previous frame relay network. About a half-dozen ShoreTel IP phones were phased in during the initial phase; the company’s analog phones will remain in place until budget permits their replacement. The deployment, which was planned in phases to avoid downtime, took two weeks, making the move from analog to IP seamless. Other benefits include:

• Easy-to-configure features such as hunt groups, workgroups, and customized routing improve customer satisfaction by connecting callers quickly to the right agent for their need.
• Advanced reporting helps managers to direct resources where they are most needed.
• Unified presence across locations: all 145 C.M. Almy employees are now on the same phone and voicemail system. A built-in suite of versatile, real-time tools puts flexible features, telephony and IM control, and collaboration services at their fingertips.
• ShoreTel’s least-cost routing capabilities also allow C.M. Almy to route outbound calls through the company’s data lines, bypassing toll charges and minimizing costs.
• Reductions in system maintenance costs across all locations, as IT staff can manage the system centrally from anywhere on the network using ShoreTel Director’s browser-based interface.

“ShoreTel delivered exactly what we expected to get out of a VoIP system — powerful features, full system control, in-depth call history information, and ease of use.”
— Jim Johnston, Manager of Information Technology, C.M. Almy & Son.