ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks Cuts its Telephony Costs in Half with 3CX

After using the same outdated, traditional PBX for a number of years, it was time for ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks to move to the next generation of business communications. 3CX Phone System has allowed them to adopt a modern, software PBX with a full, unified communications (UC) feature set, while enjoying easy and cost effective deployment, improved productivity, and significant cost savings.

The Challenge

First and foremost, the company’s new phone system had to connect five, ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks offices, with plans to expand to other locations. This was crucial to reducing call costs and improving overall staff efficiency.

As ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks employees often travel between offices, the new phone system had to enable these employees to enjoy a more seamless communications experience, no matter where they were, whether that be on a different site or on the road.

It was also essential that the new phone system utilized VoIP. The company’s traditional PBX couldn’t accommodate this unless ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks was willing to make an expensive investment in additional hardware, which would also be difficult to obtain and configure.

Finally, the company wanted a software-based PBX, which would be far more flexible and scalable than a traditional PBX.

3CX Offers a Solution

With their clean outlook on steel production and prime position in the industry, ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks, needed a communications system that would simultaneously reinforce their core beliefs and bring their business to the next level by reducing costs and improving overall employee productivity. The team at ArcelorMittal turned to 3CX as their solution, with its unrivalled mobility and ease of management, making it a huge step-up from their outdated, traditional PBX.

Of course a company with such significant global reach, in an industry built on precision and exacting standards, would only select the finest software-based PBX. Hence the reason ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks chose 3CX Phone System to replace its outdated traditional PBX. As 3CX Phone System is based on Windows, there was no need for ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks to purchase special or dedicated hardware, which reduced its upfront costs. Management was also thrilled about the ability to run 3CX Phone System in a high availability environment (hyper-v cluster).

Noble Concept Design, a 3CX Partner in Bonheiden Antwerp, Belgium, provided an offer to ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks in 2011. In the final analysis, ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks selected 3CX Phone System over Siemens and Asterisk®* systems. The entire project was completed quickly and painlessly, without any disruption to daily operations. The team are now looking forward to migrating all other offices to 3CX Phone System, which will be connected directly to the Belgian headquarters.

“ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks migrated to 3CX Phone system in 2011. We chose 3CX due to the fact that it’s easily managed and maintained by our own System Engineers, as well as 3CX having the great advantage of running in our High-Availability Clustered environment. Our Solution Partner, Noble Concept Design, carried out the switch seamlessly and they built the necessary bridges between our other plants, which saved us a huge amount on international calling costs. Moreover, we’re able to get a high quality VoIP line with Destiny VoIP providers.”

ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks, Belgium

The Results

Above all, the flexibility of the software gave the company the opportunity to install the phone system at the Slovakia site and the phones remotely, which proved to be a great solution in saving time and travel costs. Additionally, all of the phone systems on different sites are now managed centrally from the headquarters in Belgium, while new phones and updates are installed remotely. This has shown to be extremely convenient to ArcelorMittal, as well as hugely beneficial. Valuable time and money previously spent on management of their communications system is now greatly reduced.

ArcelorMittal Tailored Blanks has installed 3CX Phone System in two sites in Belgium, as well as sites in France, Slovakia and Bremen using the 3CX Bridging feature to connect each installation. As a result, inter-office calls are now treated as internal calls. As a result, the Company is now seeing huge cost savings. This is further increased by the fact that calls can be routed through the remote PBXs, so that international calling costs have been wiped out.

The Customer

With an astounding global presence with operations in more than 60 countries, ArcelorMittal is a noted supplier of high quality steel products. Tailored Blanks is supported by ArcelorMittal’s world-class R&D and wide distribution network and they are committed to working closely with their customers to optimise design, supply and cost efficiency. As a company at the forefront of the automotive steel industry, they focus on being not only steel producers but solution providers, which is reflected in their wholesome philosophy of producing safe and sustainable steel.