Vertical Wins Case for Chicago Law Firm

Law Office of Neil J. Greene

Background

A fast-paced and rapidly  expanding law practice, the Law Office of Neil J. Greene is highly  respected for its work serving the legal needs of clients in the healthcare provider sector. Reliable, seamless, and efficient communication with clients, attorneys, healthcare providers, and other stakeholders is an absolute necessity. The firm has seen a tremendous uptick in business in recent years, and with it has grown from a staff of 13 to more than 30 professionals. Constantly  adding new users and reconfiguring the firm’s communications system to accommodate expansion caused a sizable financial headache.

“Every time we needed to add a phone or shift employees, a technician had to come out to make changes on-site,” explained Neil Greene. “It was an extremely expensive and cumbersome process that inhibited our ability to serve our clients and stifled our productivity.”

In addition to high support costs, the antiquated platform was utterly unsuited to the frenetic pace of the firm. Staff had to use their desktop phone to retrieve voice mail, and the system lacked secure messaging and other vital unified communications tools now commonplace in professional services organizations.

Solution

While undertaking a thorough evaluation of a number of potential communications systems, Greene met with Bill Cody, owner of C & C Communications, a Vertical Communications dealer in Mokena, Illinois. Greene explained his challenges in locating a low-cost yet highly functional system that would deliver the features and flexibility necessary to satisfy the practice’s objectives.

“The features and operational benefits of the Vertical Wave IP platform aligned completely with the practice’s wish list,” said Cody. “The system is extremely easy to manage, with the ability to quickly move personnel and add users. In addition, Vertical’s powerful ViewPoint application provides instant visibility into incoming call queues, enabling faster response times and enhanced customer service. Vertical’s unified communications tools, including instant messaging and Microsoft Outlook integration, gives the firm an entirely new set of business tools that directly improve productivity and efficiency.”

With the Wave IP’s built-in softphone downloaded onto their desktops, attorneys and staff can now receive office calls at home or other locations outside of the office. Through the system’s unified messaging capability and ViewPoint’s desktop interface, users can easily access voice mail and email messages with the click of a mouse; send instant messages when colleagues are busy on the phone; as well as send and receive fax communications right from their desktop. According to Greene, “The entire staff relies upon the instant messaging tool. If a question needs immediate attention, an IM usually gets an immediate response. It’s discrete, efficient and always available, which makes it an ideal communications tool for us.”

Results

With the Vertical Wave IP system, the firm now has access to a number of powerful productivity tools that help streamline workflow and communication. It has also provided the Law Office of Neil J. Greene with a number of economic and operational benefits.

Gone are the high costs associated with adding users, or re-assigning phone numbers to personnel. All adds, moves and changes are now handled remotely by C & C for a fraction of the cost the firm previously paid for these services. Since the system supports both IP and legacy TDM endpoints, the firm was also able to extend the lifecycles of much of its existing hardware, resulting in even more substantial savings.

“The Wave IP system has enabled us to reduce communications costs by close to 50 percent,” noted Greene. “In fact, our communications costs for a 30-user system is roughly on par with what we spent when we had only 13 employees. The savings are phenomenal.

“Quite frankly, the Wave IP platform has allowed us to double our staff — and triple our business,” concluded Greene. “We’ve become a much more efficient and productive organization, even while managing all this growth. C & C and Vertical have taken what was once a problem area and turned it into a competitive advantage.”