At large companies like Chicago-based Mesirow Financial, which employs about 1,000 in 28 U.S. locations, phone systems are like computers.
In its four Chicago-area offices, for example, Mesirow uses a Siemens phone system. Housed in a box about the size of a refrigerator, the phone system “is essentially a very specialized computer,” said Paul Dockins, Mesirow’s vice president of telecommunications.
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“It has all the parts you’d find in a computer,” Dockins explained. “There’s a hard drive, a main processor, a tape backup and multiple cards that have different functions.”
There’s even an operating system and lots of programming code to make everything run.
But unlike the company’s PCs, this central phone system was installed in the early 1990s. And while phone systems become obsolete far slower than their computing counterparts, their advanced ages require advanced support and maintenance.
“These [phone] boxes, while reliable, are older,” Dockins said, “and maintenance costs go up.”
For years, Dockins supplemented his on-staff technicians with experts from Siemens, which were called upon as necessary. But as necessity and costs rose, Dockins started considering other options.
During his research, he came across Naperville’s United Asset Coverage Inc., which handles clients’ phone system maintenance needs by matching them with a network of more than 30,000 service providers.
“UAC acts like a broker,” said Dockins. “With Siemens, you have Siemens. With UAC, you have Siemens as one of the options, plus other companies that are qualified to do Siemens’ work. So now I’m not beholden to one entity if I have an issue. Now, instead of having just one horse, I have a stable of possible assistance.”
United Asset has made a big business of out of brokering technicians from its stable.
The company, which launched in 1997, services 5 million telephony end-users across approximately 25,000 client locations.
“We handle post-warranty maintenance agreements,” said Chief Executive Pat Martucci. “Traditionally, you buy a system from a manufacturer, and after your warranty ends you’d be restricted to only using that vendor. Or, with us, you can use that vendor, along with all the others who would be at your disposal.”
Since signing up with United Asset, Dockins has worked with non-Siemens providers about 75 percent of the time, he estimates. But every fourth call has been handled by Siemens, which is one of United Asset’s providers.
United Asset’s largest clients are hotels, with more than 130,000 phones each. The smallest customer has seven phones.
Mesirow’s phone system is programmed to send an “alarm alert” to United Asset if there is a problem.
“So if something occurs, it’ll call out to UAC and go into alarm. At that point, they have all kinds of information for us, telling us what kind of alarm it is, and what our options are,” Dockins said.
The cost?
“We have a fixed-price contract, and that’s it,” said Martucci. “They’re annual agreements for whatever the clients needs. This is typical in the industry.”
And how has the pricing worked out for Mesirow?
“We’re saving more than 20 percent,” Dockins said. “And everything’s working. That’s the thing about IT. As long as everything’s working, nobody cares.”
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