Law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP switches to XMediusFAX and saves thousands of dollars.
The Client
As one of the top Atlanta law firms, Arnall Golden Gregory (AGG) has helped many growing enterprises turn legal challenges into business opportunities with guidance on mergers and acquisitions, capital markets financing, joint ventures, litigation, and other legal services. Electronic communications and data exchange are critical to the firm’s ability to serve its clients effectively. AGG employees send and receive hundreds of faxes a day.
The Challenge
Legal contracts and agreements are critical to AGG. Nearly 200 staff members rely on faxing to transmit these documents quickly, securely and confidentially.
AGG had recently replaced a legacy analog phone system with a state-of-the-art Cisco VoIP system. This meant that their Captaris RightFax server was not compatible with their new VoIP phone system. AGG looked into upgrading RightFax, but soon learned that would be costly. They would have needed to purchase new hardware and software, and then reimplement their fax server system, and yet it still wouldn’t leverage their VoIP implementation.
Therefore, AGG set out to find a fax server that would:
- Truly leverage their Cisco VoIP environment and integrate directly with CallManager
- Offer reliability, scalability and easy-to-use administration tools
- Save them as much money as possible while still delivering a best-of-breed solution
- Be a software-only system featuring the same or even more functionality than the outdated RightFax software
- Not be dependent on analog technology (e.g., fax boards/cards, modems, hardware, etc.)
- Be implemented with minimal downtime while the old system was replaced
- Be transparent to end-users, who were already sending and receiving faxes via their Microsoft Outlook/Exchange email programs
The Solution
AGG briefly considered an eFax-like service, but it was too expensive based on AGG’s anticipated fax throughput. Turning to Sagem-Interstar, AGG was very impressed with the XMediusFAX T.38 Fax over IP (FoIP) solution. “XMediusFAX leveraged our current Cisco VoIP infrastructure,” said Paul Grulke, Director of Information Services at AGG.
Another factor that drove the decision to implement XMediusFAX was price. Grulke noted, “The cost was far better than RightFax, and we were able to eliminate one of our trunks by removing the Brooktrout board. XMediusFAX enabled us to share PRI circuits between voice and fax traffic, allowing us to minimize our telecom expenditures.”
After running XMediusFAX through its paces with a small test group, AGG was ready to move the test server into production. To accomplish this, AGG simply replaced the RightFax Microsoft Exchange connector with the XMediusFAX connector. Grulke noted, “there was minimal downtime” during the transition.
Now fax traffic comes directly into AGG’s PRI routers and is forwarded to the XMediusFAX server utilizing the T.38 protocol.
Results and Benefits
AGG is guaranteed significant ROI with its XMediusFAX investment, since it no longer requires an expensive fax board and a dedicated fax trunk line. As well, XMediusFAX requires less administration, saving AGG labour costs. In fact, AGG estimates that terminating RightFax maintenance contracts and removing its PRI line will save nearly $22,000 a year.
AGG users were already used to faxing through Microsoft Exchange, so very little product training was necessary. However, they were particularly impressed with several new features that XMediusFAX provided, such as:
- HTML email notification, which displays the first page of each incoming fax. This saves time because it allows AGG employees to quickly search for and identify specific faxes directly in the Microsoft Outlook preview pane.
- Superb fax image quality
- Easy-to-use interface featuring custom Microsoft Outlook forms
In the end, AGG traded in an outdated fax-board-based fax server for a robust and ultra-flexible boardless FoIP solution backed by stellar customer service. And best of all, AGG easily recouped their investment in less than one year.
