NACR Puts Words Into Action With Company-Wide Avaya Unified Communications

EAGAN, Minn. For communications expert NACR (North American Communications Resource, Inc.), using the same solutions that it sells to customers has proven to be a smart and successful strategy for enhancing company-wide productivity, collaboration, and service levels.

As the largest Avaya channel partner, NACR has locations across the country and is a leading provider of end-to-end communications solutions including VoIP, convergence, mobility, collaboration, unified messaging, and contact centers. The company also offers comprehensive consultative and technical support, including network readiness, design, implementation, and testing services, as well as remote diagnostics and resolution, maintenance, refurbishment, and repairs.

According to Tom Roles, President and CEO of NACR, "Our commitment to investing in Avaya Unified Communications and other state-of-the-art technologies is critical to empowering our employees and in turn, providing the high standards of responsiveness and personalized support on which NACR has built its reputation."

"Our nationwide presence and customer-centric approach to support make NACR a highly mobile organization -- not only with sales, engineering, and technician teams who travel frequently, but also with executives and other support personnel who work remotely as needed," according to Mark Whitacre, National Director of Unified Communications for NACR. "Implementing these solutions across the company enables all our employees to be mobile yet still highly accessible and productive at all times."

NACR's underlying infrastructure uses the latest Avaya Communication Manager software (Release 5.2.1) to take advantage of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for multimedia communications, terminating SIP trunks directly and transferring all long distance and 800 traffic to SIP trunks. To date, the company has converted 15 remote branch offices to gateways off Communication Manager at its headquarters location. Thirteen of those locations are protected by Local Survivable Processors, while two protect the entire system with Enterprise Survivable Servers (ESS).This infrastructure enables the deployment of the Avaya Unified Communications All-Inclusive offer, providing NACR with a wide range of productivity, collaboration, and customer service enhancing applications. For example:

In addition, the Avaya solutions give NACR first-hand knowledge and experience that the company can extend to its own customers. According to Gina Odean, National Convergence Director for NACR, "We are confident when we propose Avaya Communication Manager and Unified Communications solutions to our customers because we see those technologies at work for us and know the real value they offer."

Whenever possible, NACR also brings technologies in house to use the applications in its production laboratory and make them available for customer demonstration purposes. For instance, NACR has installed one-X Portal with Avaya Aura(TM) Presence to demonstrate browser-based telephony.

As the largest Avaya channel partner, NACR works closely with Avaya, system integrators, and other strategic partners to integrate the latest hardware, software, and applications into leading-edge solutions for diverse markets including enterprise, small and mid-size business, government, education, and healthcare. For more information, call 1-888-321-NACR (6227) or go to www.nacr.com.