Subaru distributes vehicles to dealerships across the country and supplies them with automotive parts, services and warranty coverage. In 2011, Subaru Canada recorded its second best annual sales figures thanks to their commitment to providing quality products and services, as well as their long term customer loyalty.
As a growing car manufacturer with roughly 86 Canadian dealers in operation and thousands of dealership personnel, Subaru Canada was exceeding the capacity of their old Private Branch Exchange (PBX) phone system and wanted a solution that would scale better and allow everyone to communicate and collaborate more efficiently.
They looked at a number of options to upgrade the system and realized that the ideal solution was already being used within the company since 2007 for their conferencing and collaboration requirements: Microsoft® Lync™. As a result, they started transitioning users over to Microsoft Lync to meet their voice objectives and by July 2012, Subaru Canada had completely retired all of the traditional PBX’s and Primary Rate Interfaces (PRI) throughout their Canadian offices. Today, all phone calls are placed using Lync and Voice over IP (VOIP).
In order to achieve an Enterprise-Grade solution, Subaru Canada chose to partner with a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Provider. Subaru partnered with ThinkTel to deliver a resilient SIP connection for Lync Server 2010 to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for customers and dealers. ThinkTel was selected because we are one of the longest operating and most experienced providers of SIP-based telecommunications services in Canada and the only Canadian company independently qualified by Microsoft’s standards to deliver SIP trunking directly to Microsoft Lync. George Hamin, Director eBusiness & Information Systems at Subaru Canada said: “ThinkTel was the only company considered because we wanted a SIP Provider who was certified for Enterprise-Grade SIP trunking to Lync. We felt that other SIP Providers presented a risk that we weren’t ready to take.”
SIP trunking for Lync is important because it allows Subaru Canada to eliminate potential points of failure by establishing a direct SIP connection with their mediation server, without relying on an additional gateway. ThinkTel’s SIP trunking solution also offers the following benefits.
George Hamin added: “We have a great relationship with ThinkTel; they are the bridge to Subaru Canada’s outside world. On top of the great service we receive, we are pleased with their Capacity on Demand’s burst channels, which allows us to simply purchase additional channels on a per day basis if we go over our monthly commitment. This means that we do not have to over-commit and can avoid paying for VOIP resources that we do not use. The monthly contracts also demonstrate ThinkTel’s commitment to delivering the best service possible throughout the length of our partnership.”