An Appia Case Study

ProLiance Energy is a leading supplier of natural gas. More than 100 ProLiance
Energy professionals serve a wide range of customers in 18 states from its
Indianapolis headquarters, and from sales offices in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan,
Ohio, Texas and Tennessee.

Business Challenge

Appia’s relationship with ProLiance Energy began when ProLiance wanted to test
IP communications in their IT environment. At the time, they were using PBX
systems at their corporate office and their remote sites. ProLiance’s IT staff
wanted to deploy a Cisco IP communications platform that would interface its 120
phones with IP phones. ProLiance selected Appia to design and deploy the
system.

The Appia Solution

Appia engineers deployed a Cisco Integrated Access Device (IAD) at ProLiance
corporate headquarters, which allowed them to interface an Appia IP voice
solution with their existing PBX. This provided ProLiance staff with a full-featured
IP voice solution running on Cisco Call Manager.

Over the next 12 months, Appia completed the migration of ProLiance’s two
remote offices to an Appia hosted voice solution, maintaining the interface to the
PBX at corporate headquarters. The IP solution enabled ProLiance to enjoy a
significant reduction in telecom costs by eliminating charges for interoffice calling.
The scalability of the IP telephony system also permitted ProLiance to deploy the
technology on a timeline that fit their requirements and budget.

A New Challenge

The system was functioning perfectly until Appia received a call from Andrew
Payne, ProLiance’s IT director, informing Appia that ProLiance’s legacy voicemail
system had just crashed, and asked if Appia could replace all of the remaining
legacy hardware with an Appia hosted solution before the beginning of the next
week.

Appia’s engineering staff decided that it was a challenge they were willing to
accept. Appia immediately submitted a bid for the project while ProLiance sent a
bid request to the large legacy supplier from whom they had purchased their PBX
system.

On Thursday, Appia’s bid was accepted and Appia engineers immediately began
working with Payne to design the solution; order the necessary hardware, and
plan an installation schedule that would cause little or no disruption to business
operations. On Friday afternoon, Appia began installing a new voicemail system
and IP phone services. The new system was up and running on all 120 phones
prior to the start of business on Monday morning. (The bid did not arrive from the
PBX supplier until Monday afternoon.)

The Results

Appia’s solution has helped ProLiance reduce costs and improve productivity.
Most importantly, the Appia system has virtually eliminated concerns about
reliability. Payne writes, "Let me just start by saying WOW! I made the call [to
Appia] last Tuesday to ask if we could change out all our phones and have the
system up and running over the weekend. Never in my wildest dreams did I think
it would become reality. It was amazing the way everything came together.
ProLiance could not be happier with the end result."