In late 2021, Inter Parfums acquired the fragrance division of fashion brand Salvatore Ferragamo. Most of that division’s employees were based in Ferragamo’s Florence offices, but several others lived or spent considerable time in Milan, Geneva, Hong Kong, and New York City.
Darryl Baptiste, Vice President of Information Technology, explains that his team needed to quickly integrate these new coworkers into the company’s telephony environment. But there were two obstacles.
“The first challenge was that those employees had to continue working out of the Ferragamo office while we set up a new Inter Parfums location for them in Florence,” says Darryl. “We couldn’t install traditional phone lines for our company at a Ferragamo location. Besides, we’d just have to move those lines almost immediately anyway.”
And there was a second challenge, Darryl explains. “A cloud phone solution—one capable of supporting us in all these countries—made the most sense. But those employees were already using Microsoft Teams for their internal messaging and video communications. We didn’t want to force them to use a separate app for their phone calls.”