SCA Case Study
SCA Americas chooses Continuant to keep its systems running smoothly.
SCA Americas, Inc. (SCA), a leader in the manufacture of innovative hygiene products, is a $2.2B company employing nearly 5,000 people in offices throughout the Americas.
Why SCA Washed Their Hands of Avaya
Since the 1990s, SCA has been a committed user of enterprise-class Avaya telephone systems. And when Avaya was part of Lucent, SCA was happy with the way those systems were maintained. However, after Lucent spun off the Avaya business, everything changed for SCA—and they started looking for a customer-oriented service provider.
According to SCA’s Service Desk Support Specialist, Sandy Konetzke, it was very difficult working with Avaya after the spin-off. “You wouldn’t get instant service and it wasn’t as personable,” Konetzke said, adding that SCA’s maintenance costs also increased after Avaya was spun off from Lucent.
SCA struggles with support levels from Avaya
While SCA had a “good experience in the beginning” when working with Lucent Technologies’ service, once Lucent left the scene, “We had struggles with support levels from Avaya,” including “the timeliness of their approach and overall support to SCA,” said Lori Peapenburg, Support Services Manager for SCA Americas.
SCA chooses Continuant
By 2005, concluding that they needed a more responsive and attentive maintenance and service provider, one division of the multinational corporation, SCA Tissue North America, moved all of its maintenance business for its legacy Avaya Definity® Systems to Continuant. "We were looking for an alternative to Avaya for maintenance," Peapenburg said. The initial Continuant maintenance agreement included coverage for Definity® systems in five states: Alabama, Arizona, Illinois, New York and Wisconsin.
Continuant Gets Results
After utilizing Continuant’s Maintenance Advantage Plan for two years, the parent company, SCA Americas, also made the switch, moving all maintenance of Definity® systems to Continuant. The result? An expanded role for Continuant, based on the delivery of excellent service from a “great staff.” Peapenburg added, “I’ve really seen a lot of good work” from Continuant. “Not only did we move our American and Canadian systems to Continuant; even our Mexican [and Costa Rican] counterparts also have Continuant support.” In addition to coverage for Avaya systems, the expanded coverage includes systems from other vendors such as Nortel. Cory Whitaker, SCA Network Engineer, lists reasons the switch to Continuant has been good for SCA. “Response time is huge,” Whitaker points out. “I am able to rely on Continuant…to deal with the smallest problems to the largest problems.” And, he adds, “They make me look good. I’m able to rely on Continuant to fix problems I don’t even know about.” Whitaker commented that not all service providers are like Continuant: “I deal with a lot of vendors,” he notes, adding, “One of the very few vendors I like dealing with is Continuant.”
Continuant helps SCA upgrade its systems
In 2010, Continuant worked closely with SCA and an Avaya BusinessPartner to upgrade SCA’s legacy Avaya Definity systems to CM 5.2.1, including SCA’s Philadelphia headquarters. The upgrades, designed, implemented and installed by Continuant, were undertaken because SCA was interested in consolidating and migrating internal voice traffic to its WAN and, later, to implement SIP trunking from a central location. Both moves would help the company realize a significant cost-saving on operations.
Continuant knows its stuff
Whitaker applauded Continuant’s technical expertise—including knowledge of the latest technologies from both Avaya and Cisco—and ability to design and implement these particular upgrades. “They know what they’re doing, plain and simple. They will empower you to do everything you want to do when it comes to telephony,” said Whitaker. He added: “We just had a major upgrade. There were so many things that needed to be changed.” For Whitaker, the technological expertise offered by Continuant’s engineers was extremely important. “Continuant has a lot of engineers that know all that stuff, and then some. If I don’t know a particular technology, I know someone [at Continuant] does.”