When COVID-19 suddenly sent three-quarters of Full Compass's workforce home, the company's legacy ShoreTel on-premise system couldn't be scaled to support remote workers quickly or easily enough to keep the sales team functioning.
CTPros conducted a needs assessment, guided Full Compass through a cloud platform evaluation, and deployed RingCentral across the full organization — completing implementation and training in approximately two months.
Founded in 1971, Full Compass is a leading national retailer of professional audio, video, AV, lighting, and musical instruments, headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. They offer fast nationwide delivery alongside authorized service center capabilities for parts and repair. With a large sales team managing ongoing customer relationships, reliable and flexible communications infrastructure is central to how Full Compass operates and competes.
When the pandemic hit, Full Compass went from a primarily in-office workforce to three-quarters of employees working from home almost immediately. The legacy ShoreTel system that had functioned adequately in the office couldn't be extended to remote workers at the scale needed without a lengthy, complicated process — and that wasn't time Full Compass had.
Roger Anderson, Full Compass's VP of Information Technology, needed a way for remote employees — especially the sales team — to communicate with customers as if they were still in the building. The ShoreTel system wasn't going to get them there. Full Compass turned to CTPros, their long-time Mitel/ShoreTel partner, to help find and implement a cloud platform that would work for a fully distributed workforce both immediately and long term.
"My account manager Steve from Converged was amazing. What more can I say? He contributed more to making this project successful than anyone."
Roger Anderson, VP of Information Technology, Full Compass
CTPros started with an in-depth needs assessment — understanding how Full Compass employees work, how they use technology, and what the communication goals were for both the immediate remote transition and the long term. Anderson also chose to conduct his own parallel evaluation of additional platforms alongside CTPros' recommendation, which ultimately reinforced the decision. RingCentral was selected for its Gartner Magic Quadrant UCaaS Leader status and for CTPros' ability to own the full implementation and recommend best practices specific to Full Compass's needs.
Stephen Doerr, Program Leader for the CTPros technical account team, oversaw the implementation from start to finish — setting up user profiles, configuring advanced reporting and management features typically reserved for contact centers, and resolving the minor challenges that came up during the migration quickly and professionally. In-depth training for Full Compass employees and IT management drove fast company-wide adoption. The entire implementation, including advanced contact center licensing and setup, was completed in approximately two months.
"I really enjoyed working with Roger at Full Compass because his focus was always on what would be best for his co-workers and customers. RingCentral has become a core building block of their distributed workforce culture."
Scott Dressel, Senior Account Executive, CTPros
Full Compass's initial goal was straightforward: give remote employees a calling system with the features they'd have in the office. What they got was a platform that changed how the organization thinks about itself.
Video and team chat were quickly adopted across the company — now used for all company-wide meetings, and by the sales team for client meetings. The eFax feature eliminated another separate tool. And a discovery with much larger implications: new hires no longer had to be local. Full Compass shifted to a geographically diversified hiring pool and found new ways to build employee engagement across a distributed team. One tangible example — a chat room called "The Bubbler" where employees socialize, share events, and stay connected across locations.
The RingCentral platform became a core building block of how Full Compass operates as a distributed organization — not just a phone replacement.
"All we thought we needed was phone service. The added features of chat, text, fax, and more just came with the package, but everyone's really embraced it."
Roger Anderson, VP of Information Technology, Full Compass
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