RAM helps Francesca’s serve winning dishes at all hours

TLC Ingredients

RAM helps Francesca’s serve winning dishes at all hours

OVERVIEW

This year, Francesca’s Restaurant Group is celebrating 25 years of serving clients in the restaurant community. Since its founding in 1992, FRG has grown from a single Italian restaurant to a group of five concepts across 25 locations and three states. All their locations serve contemporary and traditional foods ranging from Italian to Mexican cuisine.

CHALLENGE

In 2014, the management team at Francesca’s approached RAM. Management was looking for help in several key areas. First, there was an aging phone infrastructure that needed to be addressed because reliability and sound quality were declining ultimately affecting the overall customer experience. Second, accounts payable needed assistance consolidating and managing various phone and internet service providers. Costs, contracts, and technology were all outdated and needed an overhaul. Finally, the overall voice and internet performance needed improvement. Specifically, who could Francesca’s turn to for reliable service with a backup system in the event of a service interruption? Like all retailers, Francesca’s needed to keep answering calls and processing sales during evening and weekend hours. This was perhaps the greatest challenge. How could RAM deliver a better service, reliability, and support outside of normal business hours? After several months’ worth of meetings, research, and planning, RAM came up with several solutions. First, phone systems were replaced on a priority basis with the caveat that the new technology continues to provide traditional key system features (call transfer, hold, park, etc) along with compatibility on all connection types(analog, digital and VoIP). Store managers now enjoy better sound quality, reliability and, ease-of-use for their staff.

SOLUTION

The next challenge was replacing a variety of service providers with a uniform solution. After months of research and negotiation, RAM helped Francesca’s management team phase out dozens of separate accounts and replace those with a single voice provider and a single internet provider. This consolidation simplified customer support and accounting. Francesca’s was able to use the consolidation to maximize its buying power and receive maximum discounts for their new services.

Finally, RAM needed to deliver a system that delivered better reliability and support during normal, late night and weekend hours. The answer came in a package combining documentation, training and SD-Internet technology. Every store needed voice and internet service to cover a 7-day work schedule. RAM knew phone company support would be at a minimum during late-night hours. So, after much research, RAM brought in the right partner to provide business-class voice service and redundancy. RAM, its partners, and the client all collaborated to construct a package that would use the voice and internet circuits in a complementary way. If a service interruption occurred, a software-defined firewall redirected all voice and data traffic to the surviving service. In practice, the new service’s collective uptime has increased dramatically over the previous system. So much so that in six months’ time repair calls and outages have decreased 65%. In instances where human intervention is needed, the MIS Director and his staff have access to RAM personnel during business and late-night hours for troubleshooting and repair assistance.

RESULTS

Overall benefits:

15% savings on updated service plans vs. old carriers
dedicated team handles all support issues
monthly invoice reviews to ensure accurate billing and credits
online access for customer and vendors to monitor voice and internet uptime
updated phone systems provide the best of old technologies with new-world reliability
phone system solution saves $2,500.00 per month in rental fees (vs hosted phones)

“We are very pleased with our decision to work with RAM Communications on all of our telecom and carrier services. They have exceeded our expectations as it relates to sales, service and support and we appreciate RAM’s expertise in helping us manage telecom on a daily basis at all of our retail locations. We are very fortunate to have Rob and his team working and advocating on our behalf!”
Jordan Jacobson, MIS Director
Francesca’s Restaurant Group

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RAM helps Francesca’s serve winning dishes at all hours

TLC Ingredients