David’s House Ministries – Case Study
The Client
David’s House Ministries is located in Wyoming, MI, providing Adult Foster Care homes and community living support services for adults with developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries living in the Greater Grand Rapids community.
A game-changing, telecommunication support solution
The Challenge
As a non-profit with multiple shared resident facilities and a plan for doubling in size, David’s House needed an easily customizable and expandable communication platform to handle both day to day business, as well as resident needs all at a manageable cost.
Even though time was left in the existing contract to navigate with the existing communications provider, it was clear it was time to make a change. The system and services from the legacy organization that were utilized over the past several years had served its purpose, but with the ever-growing demand for David’s House services to the residences, lack of attentive support, and cost of expansion, staying the course was no longer viable. They needed fast and reliable support so they could focus on what they do and leave that services and support piece to the experts to just make it work for them. At the same time, they needed to manage expectations for cost and budgeting.
An additional challenge was to understand the differences between all the options and make the right decision for the organization both then and ongoing, while navigating the limitations stemming from the physical location of the facilities.
The Solution
While working through the design, VanBelkum was attentive and ready to understand the business’ daily needs along with barriers and wish lists. They seemed to really care about the well-being of the organization and the mission with attention to details.
David’s House and VanBelkum were able to design a solution that updated the entire communication system including the hosted phone system, carrier services, as well as new internet service providers (ISP) to optimize. The plan expanded options and functionality creating more mobility and ease of use for staff, as well as for residents.
Working together, we were able to look at the long term “big picture”. It was clear that while paying an early termination fee from the old provider was not favorable, the new plan saved David’s House twice as much over the next 3 years. It also provided the additional ongoing support and advanced functionality that was desperately needed.
Additionally, VanBelkum worked with the current IT company to make sure the network was able to configure correctly with this new system and utilize the new dual internet solution creating stable quality of service.
“Being visionary and creative with the challenges of meeting ops cost to help make the current business practices are sustainable helps ease our ability to grow to help more people. VanBelkum understands that and was willing to step up to that challenge. VanBelkum was the only company we vetted that spent time being fully engaged in understanding our operations, technical setup, and ongoing needs. We could tell it mattered.”
Shane Metzger, Director of Operations
The Result
David’s House is now setup with communications that fit the needs of operations and with bonus attributes to accommodate new offerings to residents. VanBelkum also provided cloud back-up in case of emergency, flexible growth, and up to date technology.
The speed to repair from the Support Team at VanBelkum brings a much-welcomed relief of vendor management time and peace of mind for the staff.
As an added bonus, the IT team has a smart network telecom team at VanBelkum to work through technical details cohesively.
“Our relationship with VanBelkum is more of a collaborative partnership rather than two separate entities that co-exist.”
Caity Young, Operations Coordinator
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