A Microsoft sundae (minus the cherry on top) 🍨

Northern Capital had all of the Microsoft goodies, except for the cherry on top: their phone system.

Streamlining

These days, tech stacks are overwhelming. From planners to communication tools to meetings to collaboration...it's endless! Monthly subscriptions or annual contracts for a slew of products add up and can cause many a headache when trying to get them to all play nicely together. Northern Capital had done it's best to avoid all that by streamlining their business with Microsoft products across the board and moving to the cloud...except for when it came to calling (they had Vonage for Business).

"We've been actively moving all of our on-premise to Azure and we're really committed to the Microsoft cloud environment. It was a natural progression for us to move to Teams, just simply because it's a Microsoft product and we have a lot of confidence in Microsoft.

But there were other reasons as well, the ease of use for Teams. We're using it for chat, we're using it for all functions except for Voice. So it didn't make sense to have multiple platforms and applications running. Especially for communications and integrated communications."

So, David, the CEO of Northern Capital, decided to do something about it. 

Due Diligence

After receiving lackluster service from their Microsoft Partner of over two decades, Northern was feeling unsatisfied so, they started researching. David reached out to Microsoft directly and asked for recommended vendors. They gave him three, one of which was BEMO, and said the vendors would be in touch...

BEMO's Josh Franklin was the only one to follow up! 

"Josh reached out very promptly and very professionally put together a very competitive, compelling proposal which put BEMO right to the top of our list."

Still, David wanted to do his due diligence. He reached out to another Partner for a proposal. 

"It wasn't very well thought out and didn't really give us a lot of confidence that they could really help us, beyond simple projects. We really have so much to do and we were looking for a partner. So, based on our experience with BEMO, we felt that it was a competitive offer and we felt that we were potentially looking at somebody we could partner with long-term."

When he thinks back on his previous partner, he knew what he didn't want and BEMO proved to have what he did want.

"I increasingly got the impression that they [Northern Capital's previous partner] would take things that were mildly complex or sometimes outright simple and make them more complex than they needed to be. Communicating with BEMO, specifically Bruno, he took very complex concepts and made them simple. That's compelling. Not everyone can do that."

Moving to The Cloud

Moving to The Cloud isn't just a shift in tools, it's a shift in culture and one that businesses can feel a little wary of making. Still, Davide knew it had to be done. When I asked him how his experience has been, this is what he said: 

"It's been, it's been much easier than anticipated and absolutely necessary given the circumstances where we have so many people working from remote locations."

Business Voice Preparations

As Northern Capital readies to move to Business Voice, I wondered how they were feeling. Did David anticipate a steep learning curve? Not at all. When comparing Business Voice to Vonage he said:

"I'm finding it actually easier to use it's so intuitive that I really I'm very confident that we'll be able to we'll make the transition with very little pain."

Curious how you'll need to prepare cost-wise? Use our calculator to get a quote in minutes 👇

Planning for the Future

If you're thinking to yourself, "Wait, isn't this just a phone system? What's the big deal?" Here it is: When your team can operate out of Teams, not only are they more productive (no jumping between apps, extra passwords, etc.) but they are also better connected to one another and to you. Plus, you're better able to keep track of your sensitive materials and your employees, which is huge when running a remote workforce as many businesses been forced to do.

"It's very important to have people collaborate and be able to effectively work with each other being able to understand what people are doing and when they're doing it and having some import data available to us from a supervisory perspective is also important to us. We'll begin to discover some of the powerful tools that are built in to the system.

We'll be in a position to really perform supervision and be able to have a very thorough understanding of what they're doing or potentially not doing."

As a company in a heavily regulated environment, this is a big deal. It's made such an impact on Northern Capital's business that they have done away with prior rules about location and can now hire the best and the brightest, no matter their location. Plus, their data is secure and their company is compliant because of Microsoft's approach:

"There's a whole bunch of other requirements that we have as a broker dealer. We have, there's a whole series of archiving requirements that are necessary. And, uh, fortunately, you know, Microsoft has all that nailed down, including chat uh, Through preservation lock and some security policies and compliance policies were able to, to meet all of our requirements.

Talk Soon! 

Northern Capital has started their move to Business Voice! How did it go? We'll update you on all the intricacies soon.