KPFF is a multi-office, multi-discipline engineering firm that has provided creative, practical solutions for projects of all kinds, scales and industries for over 60 years. The firm is organized around its core values of Excellence, Trust, Relationships, Stability and Passion, which shape its professional practice and its commitments to clients and employees. KPFF runs a decentralized IT organization, and its workforce is a mix of remote, hybrid and multi-location staff.

KPFF used a legacy Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system developed in the early 2000s, and some departments still relied on analog phone systems to coordinate and communicate. Over the previous three to four years the firm had moved closer to Microsoft as its collaboration platform of choice, with Teams becoming the standard, and a few departments decided to move into Teams Calling.

Those departments investigated using Microsoft directly as the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) provider, but the administrative controls and the interface created several obstacles. KPFF was dissatisfied with the administrative relationship with Microsoft and with the admin portal, and it was also running several disparate communication systems and needed additional Teams Calling licenses.

Because KPFF's IT organization is decentralized, any transition to Teams calling had to be an organic, bottom-up journey rather than a top-down deployment, and it had to be smooth and well-timed to protect business uptime. The firm went looking for a Microsoft Certified Partner that could remove the administrative friction at a competitive price.

After investigating several Microsoft Teams partners, KPFF came across CallTower. CallTower's per-user, per-month pricing was very competitive with KPFF's existing communications spend, and because the firm was running several disparate communication systems, consolidating on CallTower's Microsoft Teams solution made sense. CallTower was also able to supply the additional Teams Calling licenses KPFF needed.

KPFF signed with CallTower and piloted the Microsoft Teams solution in several departments. The pilot worked well and drew the interest of other departments; the active departments demonstrated the solution to interested ones, and usage spread organically across the firm. KPFF has migrated 14 departments to CallTower's Microsoft Teams, with 10 more divisions scheduled to move by the end of 2023.

The CallTower Connect admin portal gives KPFF the administrative control it lacked before. The firm can add direct inward dialing (DID) numbers as needed and break usage down by business unit in the portal, so billing is consumption-based. Each user's number travels with them in Teams on their laptop or mobile device, all integrated into the same address book.

• 14 KPFF departments migrated to CallTower's Microsoft Teams calling, with 10 more divisions planned by end of 2023
• Adoption spread organically, department to department, despite KPFF's decentralized IT structure
• Users' numbers travel with them in Teams on laptops and mobile devices, supporting remote, hybrid and multi-location work
• CallTower Connect portal lets KPFF add DIDs and break billing down by business unit for consumption-based billing
• Per-user, per-month pricing kept costs competitive with KPFF's previous communications spend