Case Study: Breakthrough Urban Ministries achieves reliable, integrated communications and $10,000 cost savings with Avaya

Breakthrough Urban Ministries: Breaking Economic – and Technology – Barriers in West Side of Chicago

Breakthrough Urban Ministries is a Chicago nonprofit serving East Garfield Park—where 42% of residents live in poverty and 40% have not finished high school—providing transitional housing, healthcare, meals (70,000 a year) and youth mentoring. After opening its new 42,500 sq. ft. FamilyPlex to expand services, the organization found its decade-old, piecemeal network and incompatible phone systems were causing monthly outages, wasted staff time on troubleshooting, and poor connectivity across its nearby sites.

Breakthrough deployed a new Avaya Fabric Connect network and Avaya IP Office voice system, adding mobile twinning and voicemail-to-email for unified, centrally managed communications. The upgrade eliminated switching trouble tickets, cut voice and network costs nearly in half (freeing about $10,000 annually), improved call routing and staff responsiveness, and freed employees to focus on client services rather than IT problems.

Breakthrough Urban Ministries

John Smith

Chief Administrative Officer