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PanTerra Success Story: Legend Merchant Group
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A dynamic financial services firm improves productivity and performance while cutting cost in half with WorldSmart™ On-Demand Unified Communications
“The beauty of WorldSmart services is that it not only cut my monthly communications cost in half but also increased the communications applications that we didn’t even know our company would use to increase productivity. It will make no sense for us to switch our company from WorldSmart.”
Background
Legend Merchant Group, Inc. (Legend) is a dynamic Wall Street based financial services firm, dedicated to responding to the diverse client needs through investment and asset management. Legend is a nationwide firm with offices in New York City, San Francisco and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with thousands of clients all over the world. Legend needed to implement business communications services for the growing geographical branch offices with exceptional client responsiveness. The solution had to be fast, easy to deploy, simple to use and administer, and flexible and scalable for the future.
Challenge
Legend previously used an on-premise PBX system with communications and collaborations support fragmented across PC Anywhere, GoToMeeting, and other collaboration components, each with its own system requirements and interface.
They found serious limitations that were hampering the company’s growth and geographical expansion. Legend experienced many problems when adding new employees and when moving or changing lines. It was also next to impossible to seamlessly integrate other applications and services within the architecture. Adding more offices seemed to require duplicating the capital investments, as well as continuing maintenance, support and upgrade charges for each component.
Financial services require fast response in the markets with high information accuracy and security. After consulting with their IT group, Legend decided to remove the existing system entirely and implement a totally new communications solution. After evaluating leading communication and collaboration solutions, Legend selected the award-winning On-Demand Unified Communications solution called WorldSmart from PanTerra Networks that is being used successfully in financial services and many other industries.
Solution
WorldSmart eliminates the need for multiple on-premise systems and applications like PBXs, instant messaging servers, video and web conferencing hardware, and collaboration systems. Available service components include voice, web collaboration, in-bound and out-bound call center and messaging services. Delivered in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, all on-premise hardware and software, integration and maintenance costs are eliminated. An enterprise-grade multi-carrier communications network delivers the voice and service quality that businesses demand.
The unique WorldSmart services delivery model satisfied the growth strategy of Legend perfectly. Their suite of services includes business voice, web meeting, audio and web conferencing, desktop sharing, remote desktop access, as well as secure instant messaging application. Legend deployed WorldSmart services in their San Francisco office in late 2006 for their communication and collaboration needs.
“In our industry, we live in our instant messaging (IM),” explains Mr. Unsworth, “and rather critical, we must have the message archive, where we are able to trace the information and records. Many IM clients do not provide meaningful archive. So we used the free consumer IM applications such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN, which normally are not secure. At the same time, we had to use other software clients to run web meetings or web conferences. What’s great about PanTerra’s WorldSmart is the IM client is able to aggregate all their communication and collaboration services and the 3rd party IM services into one experience, and also provide secured file transfer and archive.”
“Even more, the best thing with WorldSmart is the capability to allow desktop sharing directly from the IM client. This has been extremely easy from our part in compare to the traditional way in the case of support needed. I don’t have to follow the technical support over the phone for half an hour and often time people get lost in the technical instructions. I just give the desktop control to the support by a simple click from the IM client.”
Great service and what it means to a business’ bottom line is sometimes hard to quantify, but customers know when they experience it. WorldSmart on-demand unified communications is visual and easy. To make a phone call, it just takes a click using the soft-phone in the IM client application. Staffs can see the presence of their colleagues and clients, enabling fast responses and information inquiries to support intelligent and timely decisions and higher productivity.
With WorldSmart collaboration services, working together has never been easier. Legend is able to conduct web meetings and desktop sharing with clients from all over the world with a few simple clicks. Real-time business information sharing, like business presentations and secure file transfers, is available with their clients around the world, from New York to London, Paris to Shanghai, and Tokyo to Hong Kong. Yet all these enhanced capabilities are easier to administer and far less costly.
“Now we don’t have to handle five different bills and software user manuals.” explains Mr. Unsworth. “Another beauty of WorldSmart services is the on-demand. We never have to pay a nickel on the features or services that we don’t use. We pay as we use and scale up and down as needed. Now I am expanding the WorldSmart services to New York, Ft. Lauderdale, and even remote satellite offices can be supported with nearly 70 seats as we see the significant benefits of the voice and web collaboration services.”
Key Results and Benefits
- Costs cut more than half – With the WorldSmart services, Legend eliminated the upfront equipment costs for business expansion and cut monthly recurring costs to half.
- Reliability and disaster recovery – WorldSmart services are hosted at PanTerra’s world class, carrier grade, data and communications centers that have sophisticated equipment and full redundancy. Data is always secure and can be quickly recovered. In the case of any disaster, communications can be routed via different network connectivity. With the on-premise PBX, Legend was unable to reach to the rest of the world if they lost connectivity.
- Virtual office dream come true – WorldSmart makes the virtual offices possible. Calls can be routed to anywhere on earth that has a high-speed internet connection. Legend employees can be in their virtual office even when they are on the road.
- No more maintenance or upgrades – There is no hardware or technology to maintain on premise, and no more software upgrades to perform. PanTerra now performs all the day-to-day system operation and maintenance for Legend. All the latest technology upgrades are automatically made available from the data centers.
- Performance and productivity increase – Communication and collaboration have been made simple and easy to use. With the added value from on-demand unified communication services, Legend has the tools they need to conduct global business efficiently and effectively, and they can focus on their core business activities and customer satisfaction.
About Legend Merchant Group
Legend Merchant Group, Inc. (Legend) is a diversified investment bank based in New York with offices in San Francisco and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Legend is a registered FINRA Broker-Dealer; SEC-Registered Investment Advisor; and member of the National Futures Association, NYSE Arca and SIPC.
About PanTerra Networks
PanTerra Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of on-demand unified communications with its WorldSmart™ software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. The company is privately held with its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, and Research and Development located in Hyderabad, India. For more information, please visit www.panterranetworks.com or call +1 408.702.2200.