Staying ahead of not just the competition, but increasing customer expectations and safety standards presents a number of challenges for construction brands. For many companies, the key to success is ensuring team members from all segments can communicate and collaborate effectively on projects.
Unfortunately, many legacy solutions for communication simply don’t offer the speed, agility, and reliability many construction brands need. This is why countless organisations have begun shifting their strategy into the cloud, with Unified Communications as a Service.
Leading company Berglund Construction found itself in need of an innovative new solution for keeping team members synchronised in recent years. The brand, with more than 100 years of heritage, wanted to boost team member accessibility and reconnect the workforce. Fortunately, the world-leading communications brand, Avaya, was on-hand to help.
Here’s what happened when Berglund Construction implemented Avaya technology.
Discovering a Need for Better Communications
Berglund Construction was first founded in 1911 as a family-owned business in Southern Chicago. The company prioritises innovation, hands-on performance, and a consistent focus on excellent customer service. With more than 350 employees located throughout the Midwest of the United States, the business has grown extensively over the years.
According to early stories from the brand, the founder of Berglund Construction started the business with nothing more than a ladder, bucket, and shovel. Of course, in the last 100 years, the industry has come a long way, and Berglund has evolved to keep up with customer expectations. Today, it’s even recognised as one of the top 400 contractors in the US.
The projects completed by the Berglund team range from specialist boutique tasks to renovations of some of the most iconic buildings in the American landscape. The business even created the Skydeck ledge at Willis Tower. However, while the processes and tools used by Berglund Construction have transformed over the years, its communication strategy has often lagged behind.
According to the brand, the industry-leading company was long reliant on an outdated and problematic phone system. The Business Operations Manager for the business, Carol Hall, noted the phone system had been in use for around 25 years, and simply wasn’t meeting the growing expectations of the brand when it came to remote field collaboration.
Finding a Scalable, Future-Proof Solution
According to Hall, for any construction company, collaboration is crucial to ongoing success. However, Berglund was having a hard time keeping its team connected. The old phone system needed to be reset around twice a week just to keep it up and running. It also didn’t offer the innovative, collaborative tools the team needed to align remote workers.
Hall was well aware that the company was overdue for an upgrade, but she didn’t want to rush into choosing the wrong service. Instead, she was careful to explore all of her options in the VoIP landscape, looking for something with a strong focus on collaboration and scalability. The tool which stood out the most for the company was the Avaya IP Office Platform.
After testing the technology, Berglund was able to rapidly deploy Avaya IP Office for all employees throughout its various office locations and job sites. The company is also introducing the technology to larger environments where the team are involved in long-term projects.
At the time of the case study, Hall noted that there was a particularly large job site in the Champaign-Urbana area which needed access to Avaya technology. Thanks to the flexibility of the ecosystem, the team was able to implement the Avaya technology to create a kind of temporary office. Instead of spending the money to run hardlines to the facility, the team can leverage IP Office as an agile environment whenever they start work on a new job site.
Unlocking the Benefits of Avaya IP Office
Berglund Construction found voice quality and collaboration in general, improved as a result of the team becoming less dependent on hot spots and cell phones. What’s more, the team also said Avaya Office was extremely easy to deploy and scale across job site environments.
Hall reported IP Office also helped to save the company a significant amount of money while also improving reliability. Phone rates have gone down for the team, and the improved reliability has led to fewer frustrations for staff members. The full team can now collaborate and communicate seamlessly without the strain of sudden phone outages.
Given the nature of the business, around half of the Berglund workforce won’t be present in an office environment at any given time. This has made the IP Office mobile twinning functionality particularly useful to the company. Hall said the twinning feature allows team members to become more accessible. Employees are also fond of the feature because it means they can give their desk numbers to clients instead of their personal cell phone numbers.
The connectivity offered by the solution has delivered significant advantages too. Hall and various other team leaders consistently move throughout different office environments in their day-to-day work. Fortunately, with Avaya IP office, these employees can simply plug in their extensions wherever they are and access their comprehensive phone system without compromising on features.
Looking Forward
Currently, Berglund Construction’s team are enjoying the various benefits of Avaya IP Office on an international scale. However, the company is also planning on taking its investment in the portfolio to the next level going forward. For instance, as large and long-term jobs are becoming more common for the team, Hall believes the business will continue to roll IP Office instances out to various new sites going forward.
At the same time, the business leaders are interested in deploying Avaya’s video conferencing technologies in making sure collaboration between team members on job sites and in the office can be as engaging and immersive as possible.
