Executive Summary

Company: Avella Specialty Pharmacy
Industry: Healthcare
Employees: 1,200
Overview: To support the growing needs of Avella Specialty Pharmacy, Communication Square fulfilled a PBX to Cloud Migration by initially deploying a Lync to Skype for Business.

Solution: PBX to Skype for Business Migration

Opportunity

Avella Specialty Pharmacy is a National Specialty Pharmacy catering patients, providers, and all other healthcare organizations across the entire healthcare sector. They are dedicated to improving the lives of different individuals they serve. People involved in fulfilling this objective include clinicians, advocates, committed healthcare partners and innovators. They have employed the latest technology while maintaining their high-touch approach. Technology used involves mobile apps, a provider portal and smart pill bottles, each one of these contributing towards a better healthcare system.

It had become difficult for the company to reach out to patients’ families, teachers, colleagues, and other caregivers. Infrastructure costs kept increasing to accommodate the growing number of users.

Communication Square

The decision to Migrate Avella to Skype for Business resulted in a significant increase in employee productivity, and it made it easier for them to cater to the ever-growing needs of their patients.

Favad Qaisar
CEO

So, Avella’s expenses were rising for a system that couldn’t even meet their needs. It quickly became clear that they needed a solution that would aid unified communication. That’s when the company decided to investigate Lync to Skype for Business Migration.

Avella had approximately 1,200 users in 8 distinct locations using the system. Except for the Head Quarters, each location had a Survivable Branch Appliance configured. Avella also had a contact center setup, and which had integrations with Skype for Business for Call Routing to their Customer Service Agents. They received more than 3,000 calls a day with most months ending up in 100,000+ calls with all the reporting and tracking done on the web-based portal integrated with Skype for Business.

The Solution

When Avella came to Communication Square LLC for consultancy, we recommended they upgrade their Enterprise Voice enabled Lync to Skype for Business and make them readily available. Several network-readiness assessment sessions were performed, and it was found that an integrated digital workplace was needed. A workplace that allowed employees to make and receive any number of calls from anywhere. Additionally, they needed a virtual care team that could handle internal and external communication through Phone System, SharePoint, and Exchange. Both parties agreed that a Lync to Skype for Business Migration would be the best course of action.

Avella Specialty Pharmacy

We have a very collaborative staff which interacts with drug manufacturers, providers and payers through every step of the treatment from securing prior authorization to product fulfillment and mid-therapy support.

Jason Sevier
Director, IT Operations and Infrastructure

Once the Migration was successful, Avella experienced accelerated decision-making and instant access to colleagues and information over all eight work sites. Also, highly visual and interactive conferencing increased their effectiveness and productivity by reducing travel time for on-site trial locations.

Differences Between Lync Server 2010 and Skype for Business 2015

Feature	Lync Server 2010	Skype for Business 2015
Publish status	✔	✔
View status	✔	✔
View status notes and Out of Office messages	✔	✔
Add a custom location		✔
Add a custom note	✔	✔
Use a photo from any public site for My Picture		✔

Benefits

The Avella team was absolutely delighted with their upgrade. This process of migration offered Avella a lot more flexibility, productivity and savings with their communication systems. They were able to utilize mobile devices and home computers equipped with the latest Skype for Business features like:

Unified Communication Across the Company
Simplified multiple location Management
Extends when the business extends
Reduced costs and Infrastructure Management
Connects the remote and mobile workforce
Access to all the latest features

With the latest communications tech, Avella would be able to expand even further without having to worry about future needs.
This Teams Phone System migration allowed them to improve their communication and collaboration, and it also made it easier for them to connect with other online pharmacies.
All while keeping costs at a minimum with their Microsoft Skype for Business Upgrade.

Avella Specialty Pharmacy

The Migration to Skype for Business was not an easy job as the slightest mistake could have resulted in huge problems but with the intelligent planning and execution done by Communication Square, everything went smoothly.