The experts at consulting firm Cramer Fish Sciences are often on the move—conducting research in the field, visiting clients’ offices to present analyses, or traveling among the company’s six locations across the Northwestern US. Their work often influences government policy regarding fisheries and other natural-resource challenges, but it’s difficult to explain to nonscientists, so the team, most of whom hold Ph.D.s and Master of Science degrees, describes Cramer Fish Sciences this way: “We solve fish problems.”
These highly mobile scientists also often need to communicate and collaborate with their colleagues, even when those colleagues or they themselves are in the field. And until recently, the team was working with a disparate set of phone systems that made it difficult for employees at one location to reach a colleague in another office (and nearly impossible to connect with that colleague on the road).