1. Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Customer Solution Case Study
Bowling Company Scores Big Savings with
Communications Solution
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Mechanicsville,
Virginia, QubicaAMF has 400 employees
worldwide.
Business Situation
As a company supporting a global
employee and customer base,
QubicaAMF was searching for innovative
ways to improve internal and external
communications.
Solution
QubicaAMF deployed Microsoft Lync
Server 2010 to improve conferencing and
support capabilities.
Benefits
 Reduced travel by 50 percent and
improved customer communications
with online meetings
 Avoided 50 percent increase in IT staff
 Decreased travel and training cost of
enterprise resource planning (ERP)
installation by more than 50 percent
 Improved customer service by
supplying local contact numbers
“Without Lync, we would have needed more
consultants, and we would have had to fly people
around. It would have doubled the cost of the ERP
deployment, if not more.”
Rohana Meade, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, QubicaAMF
Manufacturing everything that goes into a bowling alley,
QubicaAMF supports bowling center owners with turnkey and
custom construction projects on new centers, upgrades to
existing centers, and with parts and service needs. Though it has
only 400 employees, QubicaAMF has offices in 17 countries and
supports customers in more than 90 countries. As a global
company, it requires excellent communications capabilities to
maintain operational efficiency. QubicaAMF upgraded to
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to take advantage of capabilities
such as online meetings and desktop sharing, in addition to the
instant messaging, presence, and telephony capabilities it
already used. Along with a custom Skype integration solution
created by Microsoft Partner Network member Progel,
QubicaAMF is using Lync Server 2010 to reduce travel, improve
customer relationships, and save on staffing and consulting
costs.

2. Situation
A distinctive sound occurs when somebody
bowls a strike. Ten pins banging against
each other and the walls. The ball hitting
the back of the lane with a thud. For
anyone who has bowled a strike, the sound
is instantly recognizable and brings a smile
to their face.
QubicaAMF helps bring those smiles to life
by producing virtually everything that goes
into the construction of a bowling alley. It
manufactures the pinspotters, lanes, pins,
and all of the other specialized equipment.
It also produces the software to handle
scoring, management, and point-of-sale
systems in bowling centers.
Headquartered in Mechanicsville, Virginia
and with European headquarters in
Bologna, Italy, QubicaAMF was formed in
2005 by the merger of AMF Bowling
Products and Qubica Worldwide. The
company has installed more than 10,000
bowling centers in 90 countries.
Global Challenges
When Qubica and AMF Bowling Products
merged, the new company faced some
difficult communications issues. “Many of
our teams were now international, and
people didn’t know each other very well,”
explains Rohana Meade, Vice President and
Chief Information Officer at QubicaAMF. As
teams were integrated, the company faced
large phone bills for calls between its
international offices and travel bills for
meetings.
To help resolve these issues, QubicaAMF
decided to deploy Microsoft Office
Communications Server 2007 as a small
test deployment in the IT department, with
the possibility of a full deployment in six
months to a year. “We set up PBX [private-
branch exchange] integration with dual ring
so we could answer our office phones on
the computer when we were travelling,”
says Meade. “I was in Italy, talking on the
phone with someone back in the United
States, and someone from the Project
Management Group saw what I was doing
and wanted it. We implemented it for them,
and soon the credit and marketing teams
were asking for it. We ended up doing the
worldwide deployment in less than 90 days
just to meet demand.”
Office Communications Server completely
changed the way that employees at
QubicaAMF interacted. The company
quickly developed a chat culture, and email
and phone usage dropped dramatically.
The most common form of communication
ended up being video calls. “With
international teams, where English isn’t
everyone’s first language, video really aids
communications because you can see
people’s expressions,” says Meade.
Office Communications Server also enabled
communication between people who might
have never talked with each other before.
“Our project managers coordinate
shipments from around the world. Now
they can send an instant message to a
warehouse in Europe and see if shipment
left on time or coordinate with an installer
travelling from Germany,” explains Meade.
“We can now find people and communicate
directly, which accelerates the flow of
information and makes our lives easier.”
What Else Can It Do?
As the new company grew over the next
several years, some new challenges came
into view and the IT department looked to
Microsoft to see how it could solve them.
The IT team was supporting users in 17
offices from two central locations. “IT
support was really painful. We would
attempt to replicate the issue locally or
have users send screenshots,” explains
Meade. “Getting users to capture a
screenshot is really difficult. It was just
painful to troubleshoot anything.”

3. Another issue the company faced was
providing customer support for customers
spread out over 90 countries. With
customer support in only three locations,
customers were often forced to make long-
distance calls to get help.
Finally, the recession in 2010 led to
significant budget cuts, especially for travel.
Travel budgets were cut by 50 percent in
2011 alone. QubicaAMF wanted to expand
its communications solution to help
address these issues.
Solution
To gain improved communications
capabilities such as desktop sharing and
integrated conferencing, QubicaAMF
upgraded to Microsoft Lync Server 2010. It
has deployed Lync Server 2010 at two sites,
one in the United States and one in Italy.
Each site uses a Lync Server 2010 Standard
Edition server along with a mediation
server and a gateway for PBX integration
with its Siemens HiPath PBX equipment,
which is certified for Lync.
Providing Soft Phones for All Employees
All 364 knowledge worker employees now
enjoy dual-mode calling, which means
incoming calls ring on both their desk
phones and the Microsoft Lync 2010 client
on the desktop. This enables employees to
answer incoming calls when they are
travelling or working from home. About 40
employees have retired their desk phones
and use Lync 2010 as their phone
exclusively.
Expanding Conferencing Usage
More employees are also using
conferencing with the deployment of Lync
Server 2010. The new integrated client and
the interoperation with Microsoft Outlook
2010 for scheduling make planning and
attending calls easier. Now that advanced
conferencing features like whiteboarding
are part of the client, employees use them
more frequently. QubicaAMF also
integrated Lync Server 2010 with its
Polycom videoconferencing solution so
that individuals can join videoconferences
using their Lync 2010 client. This enables
employees to participate in
videoconferences even if they are not at a
location with the Polycom equipment.
QubicaAMF has quickly adopted the
desktop-sharing capabilities for many
functions. Employees frequently use
desktop sharing to collaborate on
documents during ad hoc meetings. The IT
department has adopted desktop sharing
for troubleshooting.
Adding Skype Integration
QubicaAMF also extended Lync Server 2010
to solve its problem of providing support
to customers in remote locations.
Salespeople were using Skype because
customers used it. QubicaAMF hired Progel,
a member of the Microsoft Partner
Network, to develop a solution to enable
customers to call its customer care center
using Skype. Progel set up a Skype number
in every country and routed it through Lync
Server 2010 to the customer care center. If
customers need to talk to a salesperson or
to someone at a specific office, the call can
be routed through Lync Server, so
customers no longer have to make
international calls to get support.
Mobile Client and More
QubicaAMF is deploying the Lync Mobile
client in response to employee demand.
Employees use a mix of Windows Phone,
Android, and iPhones, and Lync Mobile
clients are available for all of these
platforms.
Going forward, QubicaAMF sees many
additional capabilities that could provide
benefits such as federation and using Lync
to implement least-cost routing.
“Instead of sending
documents back and
forth, we make the
changes together using
Lync desktop sharing. It
has accelerated our
business processes.”
Rohana Meade, Vice President and Chief
Information Officer, QubicaAMF

4. Benefits
QubicaAMF obtained substantial benefits
when it deployed Office Communications
Server 2007. It reduced toll charges for
international calls between offices to
almost zero. It helped facilitate the merger
of the two companies by enabling teams to
communicate frequently through
videoconferencing, which facilitated the
development of a unified corporate culture.
With the deployment of Lync Server 2010,
QubicaAMF expanded its communications
capabilities and saw many additional
benefits, such as the expansion of virtual
meetings, improved customer relationships
by using its custom Skype integration, and
a further increase in productivity through
the use of desktop sharing and Lync
Mobile.
Reduced Costs and Improved Customer
Communications with Online Meetings
The economic downturn in 2010 forced
QubicaAMF to cut its travel budgets. With
the Lync Server deployment, the company
continues to operate efficiently using
virtual meetings. “When we cut the travel
budget and people started using Lync, the
number of meetings actually went up
because people found out how easy it is to
use,” says Meade. “With Lync, we can have
10 to 12 people share a whiteboard. It’s not
identical to having everyone in the same
room, but it’s a very good experience.”
QubicaAMF used to fly several employees
to Japan on a regular basis for meetings
with one of its largest customers. Now the
meeting is held via Lync, with the customer
joining through Lync Web App. “We are
saving $25,000 per meeting, which is great,
but that’s not the biggest benefit,” says
Meade. “We can meet more frequently and
with more people, which has improved
communications. We are seeing a bigger
benefit just from the relationships we’ve
developed.”
Ad hoc meetings to work on documents or
to share ideas have become commonplace
as well. “I will frequently launch a Lync
meeting and share a document and do
budgeting with my team in real time. We
see examples of that all around the globe
on a daily basis,” says Meade. “Instead of
sending documents back and forth, we
make the changes together using Lync
desktop sharing. It has accelerated our
business processes.”
IT Costs Kept Low
By using Lync 2010, the IT staff at
QubicaAMF provides better service to
remote users, which keeps staffing needs
down. “I have a staff of 17 people. We
would need twice that if we didn’t have
Lync,” says Meade.
QubicaAMF really saw the benefits of Lync
during a recently completed worldwide
enterprise resource planning (ERP)
implementation. “We had people in the
United States supporting European offices
and troubleshooting ERP system issues
using desktop sharing,” explains Meade.
“Without Lync, we would have needed
more consultants, and we would have had
to fly people around. It would have
doubled the cost of the ERP deployment if
not more.” The company also used Lync to
train employees on the ERP system.
Better Customer Service
Previously, many QubicaAMF customers
had to incur long-distance charges to talk
with support staff. With the custom
integration of Skype with Lync Server
provided by Progel, the company provides
local numbers in all of the countries it
serves. This resulted not only in cost
savings for its customers, but better
customer relationships as customers are
more likely to seek support or advice.
“I have a staff of 17
people. We would need
twice that if we didn’t
have Lync.”
Rohana Meade, Vice President and Chief
Information Officer, QubicaAMF

5. Money Saved by Taking Lync on the
Road
As with many IT initiatives at QubicaAMF,
employee demand led to the rollout of
Lync Mobile. Employees saw the potential
benefits of being able to stay in contact
while they were away from their computers.
QubicaAMF also sees the potential for cost
savings, as employees can use the mobile
client to connect to meetings rather than
dialing into a conferencing bridge.
Additional Benefits Expected in the
Future
QubicaAMF has seen a nearly
instantaneous payback from its investment
in Lync Server through cost savings in toll
charges, travel, and avoided staffing costs.
It still sees the potential for additional
benefits. QubicaAMF will implement least-
cost routing to reduce international calling
charges even further by using Lync to route
calls over its network. The company also
sees great potential in the federation
capabilities of Lync. It has already federated
with several technology vendors to improve
project planning. It also sees a lot of
potential in using Microsoft Office 365 to
supply Lync to its customers, so that the
company can use Lync to provide technical
support.
Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ushers in a new
connected user experience that transforms
every communication into an interaction
that is more collaborative, and engaging;
and that is accessible from anywhere. For
IT, the benefits are equally powerful, with a
highly secure and reliable communications
system that works with existing tools and
systems for easier management, lower cost
of ownership, smoother deployment and
migration, and greater choice and
flexibility.
For more information about Microsoft Lync
Server 2010, go to:
www.microsoft.com/lync
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers in the United States and
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing
can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.
Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access
information using the World Wide Web,
go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Progel
products and services, call (39) 051
6639411 or visit the website at:
www.progel.it
For more information about QubicaAMF
products and services, call (804) 569-
1000 or visit the website at:
www.qubicaamf.com
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2012
Software and Services
 Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Lync 2010
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Hardware
 Siemens HiPath PBX
Partners
 Progel