When backup power is critical, seamless communication becomes vital
How a supplier of critical backup power ensures customers are never left in the dark
“If there’s a power outage and you need to phone 911, we ensure that the power is there, and you have connectivity,” says Ian Kane, President of Alpha Technologies.
Alpha Technologies Ltd. has built a business safeguarding companies against power outages with critical backup power solutions for the broadband and telecom sectors. However, the need for backup power goes beyond contacting emergency services. In the cable, wireless, and broadband sectors a loss of power can mean costly downtime, broken communications, disrupted traffic systems, and compromised data security.
To keep their customers online, Alpha Technologies needs reliable communications. “Because we provide these services across North America, our service team and our sales team need to be close to the customers,” says Kane. “And if there’s a storm or critical situation, and our customers need to have technical back up, then we need to be accessible.”
A pioneer in backup power
40 years ago, Alpha Technologies pioneered the concept of continuous power supply. Today, they continue to innovate new power solutions that are customized to work for many applications, even in remote locations.
“We’ve evolved and stayed abreast of the marketplace, and have been in pretty much constant growth,” says Kevin Borders, Vice President of Marketing.
As the company has grown over the years, innovating and designing solutions to meet their customers’ needs, their legacy phone system hadn’t evolved at the same pace. “We’ve evolved with a market that started 40 years ago, pre-cellphone. Everybody had a landline, and no Internet,” explains Borders. Alpha Technologies needed a phone system they could trust in the same way their customers trusted them. “For us, if our customers can’t get to us, we can’t deliver on that,” says Borders.
In one instance, when their legacy system went down it impacted their customer service line, support ticketing, and their ability to connect customers with the service teams in the field. As a result, they lost time on projects and were forced to manually reroute calls, which cost them thousands of dollars and dozens of hours in staff time.
An innovation in business phone systems
When the senior team at Alpha Technologies learned about Rogers Unison™, they saw a solution with the flexibility to connect their team across their networks. “With Rogers Unison our offices are more connected than they ever were before,” explains Kane. “We have a direct connection with all of our remote locations across our network.”
Replacing the complicated, aging infrastructure allowed Alpha Technologies to combine the best features of desktop phones with the convenience and portability of mobile communications. This means that with more than 200 employees spread across their two offices, as well as their sales and service teams, everyone was reachable whether they were in their head office in Burnaby, BC or in the field with clients.
Cost savings was just the beginning
The president of Alpha Technologies is quick to comment on the impact Rogers Unison has had on their business and how it has positioned them for the future. “Some of the benefits of moving to a cloud-based system are automatic updates and we don’t have to maintain hardware. The reliability is fantastic,” says Kane. “We’ve saved about $1,600 a month and we’ve also been able to reroute our resources to focus on value-add activities and we don’t have the huge expense of looking for replacement parts for old hardware.”
Furthermore, pairing Rogers Unison with Microsoft 365 has allowed for real-time collaboration with their head office in Burnaby, BC from anywhere. “It enables us to provide our employees in the field with the applications they need and access to our data,” says Sam Wong, Chief Financial Officer.
Getting the information that’s needed wherever and whenever it’s needed lets their sales and service teams extend this reliability to their customers. From onsite troubleshooting to collaborating on new power solutions in real-time, Alpha Technologies is able to work together more efficiently. “Rogers is helping us bring innovation to our organization, which enables us to exponentially grow,” says Kane.
Find out how Rogers Unison can help your business. Learn more