"It couldn't expand with us," said Tony Paris, director of information systems for Pioneer. "We were basically at capacity and could not add more hand sets. As we grew we began looking for something that would not only serve us as effectively, but that would also take advantage of new technologies and take us into the converged space when it comes to phone systems."

"We are a very demanding client," said Paris. "We expect a great deal and felt Teoma Systems could deliver. They took the time to understand us and what our challenges were and did a great job of providing a cost-effective, pragmatic and forward- looking solution."

"With this solution, we can run VoIP internally if we want to," said Paris. "We choose not to right now, but it's just a matter of changing a phone switch. We decided we would implement the 'same as' and then deploy the rest incrementally. We are going to have roughly 30 VoIP installations at remote home offices for our field adjusters. We also purchased soft phones for the many people in the company who travel. What we expect to realize from this investment is more efficient and effective communications between our insureds, our remote users, our agents and our internal staff."

"Teoma helped us plan the migration and the cutover and provided training for the new users," said Paris. "We wanted to eliminate the 'phone guy' so we could do our own moves, adds and changes and general phone administration. Teoma has trained our IT staff so that we are capable of doing that."

"Our remote employees, under the legacy system, had an office voicemail box, a home office voicemail box and a cell phone voicemail box," said Paris. "With the VoIP features of the new system, I don't need to know where an employee is. I will be able to dial the number and it will ring at all three places, then I can leave a message and the employee can retrieve it from one, consolidated voicemail box."

"We are definitely pushing the envelope," said Paris. "And it has not been without challenges, but there has been nothing that wasn't easily overcome so far."

Pioneer State Mutual, Tony Paris