3CX Cuts Soaring Communications Costs at AirFrance Russia

With more than 100 employees, AirFrance Russia was seeing increasing communications traffic and expenses. They set out to find a replacement solution for their outdated PBX, a solution that would cut costs and offer additional UC features to bring the airline’s communication to the 21st century. After browsing various systems, and finding the costs simply too high, AirFrance Russia worked with ICE Partners and decided that 3CX was the way to go.

The Challenge

The company’s legacy Alcatel®* PBX cost about $22,000 per year to run. Worse still, it did not provide mobility for workers who needed to stay in touch with team members whilst working remotely. AirFrance Russia also wanted to connect up its three branch offices in other countries to cut the cost of international interoffice calls.

Furthermore, the airline hoped for a seamless and hassle-free transition to the new system, with as little downtime as possible and an user-friendly interface for both administrators and employees.

3CX Offers a Solution

Manuel Caffiaux, Telecom Department Head, shopped around for an advanced system. He looked at Alcatel® and Asterisk®*, but found the former too expensive and the latter too difficult to adapt. Caffiaux chose 3CX PRO Edition and installation was a quick hop thanks to piloting by Moscow-based 3CX Partner ICE Partners Soft.

3CX PRO is based on open standards and runs on mainstream software, so it was easy for AirFrance Russia’s IT staff to integrate with its own hardware and software. 3CX took control of the Company’s 65 Yealink IP Phones, two E1 data lines and VoIP gateway, and had the system up and running in minutes.

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“3CX PRO brings us the full functionality of modern telecom services with lower investment costs than competitor solutions. It is easy to configure to our business needs, bridging AirFrance Russia’s remote offices with one system, allowing any employee to work outside of the office and still be a part of the team. It’s a solution that has cut expenses for international calls very effectively.”

Manuel Caffiaux, Telecom Department Head, AirFrance Russia

The Results

Lowest-cost call routing enabled the company to sharply cut all of its phone expenses. Call management, covering all of the company’s locations, was simplified thanks to 3CX’s easy-to-use routing controls. At the same time, interoffice calls became free using IP telephony. Monitoring and managing calls became easy to do too, working with the 3CX Switchboard and Wallboard.

3CX PRO provides total mobility: Workers anywhere in the world can now call, chat, message, and join in video conferences for up to 25 people, and all communications are entirely free. Each worker can be reached on their extension via the 3CX softphones or smartphone clients wherever they are. The overall result has been a massive and total upgrade in quality of communication for AirFrance Russia, with its leapfrog from a traditional PBX to cutting-edge 3CX technology.

The Customer

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AirFrance Representation for Russia and CIS, part of the French flag carrier, handles passenger travel, cargo transportation, and aircraft maintenance for the region. The company offers nearly 70 flights a week to Moscow and Saint Petersburg from Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam-Schiphol, along with 112 flights each week to and from Saint Petersburg, Kiev, Ukraine, Yerevan, Armenia, and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

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