When Gannons, a London firm of Solicitors expanded beyond the capabilities of its previous BT system, they wanted an easily scalable VoIP solution that would give them greater flexibility for office and home workers.

Investment Training Company makes significant savings and increases efficiency with new VOIspeed technology and hardware

Central Telecom has helped Cambridgeshire County Council to transform its working environment by providing its employees with fast, simple, 'always on', access communications. Using an Avaya Unified Communications solution the Council is building a converged IP network which will improve the delivery of services to a population of over 560,000 citizens.

The new converged IP network has allowed the Council to achieve a true business transformation, helping meet its objective to develop an empowered and responsive workforce, whilst delivering more than 20% (£1.2m) savings over a three year period.

The communications industry is evolving with lightning speed. As the dream of convergence – from bundled voice, data, and video services to integrated wireline and wireless technologies – becomes a reality, the pressure on domestic and global market players is reaching unprecedented levels. To keep up with next generation demands, communications companies must be innovators – not only with what they offer to their customers, but also with how they run their internal operations.

Diagnostic Products Corporation (DPC) is a worldwide provider of medical immunodiagnostic tests and equipment.

Southwark Council looked to Red Box Recorders for the Voice Recording infrastructure to support their Mitel IP telephony solution and assist them in driving citizen based services, improve quality of delivery and address complaints and problems.

Red Box Recorders offered a software based voice recording solution that was fully compliant with the Mitel IP telephony solution and offered a cost effective reliable solution to help the organsiation improve service delivery and add more services.

BRITISH AMATEUR GYMNASTICS ASSOCIATION ROLLS OUT INTERNET TELEPHONY

Business Environment
VoIP networks and IP phones can offer tremendous benefits to organisations with multiple locations. British Amateur Gymnastics Association (BAGA), the Governing Body for the sport of Gymnastics in the UK required a call management solution that would allow them to connect their remote offices and home workers while considerably reducing call costs.

Based at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire, British Gymnastics works from three separate buildings with a total of 80 staff of which 20 work from home or remote offices. Considering the vast advantages of Internet telephony, British Gymnastics decided to make use of its broadband connection to create a robust VoIP environment.

The Challenge
British Gymnastics had an Avaya PBX system in place. Three years after its original implementation, the system reached its end-of-life. They did not want to upgrade the system with its current replacement product and wanted instead to opt for a feature-rich platform which adopted open standards technology.

British Gymnastics explored the possibilities of a VoIP solution, primarily because they had a number of remote offices that could easily be linked using voice over IP on their existing broadband connection and the considerable potential for cost savings on inter-office calls. The system also needed to be scalable and interoperable with other vendors’ equipment. Overall, they required high reliability and flexibility.

Their foremost concern was, if their existing LAN infrastructure would cope with the additional VoIP traffic. They were also concerned if QoS (Quality of Service) would be an issue, both on the LAN and WAN.

With prior experience of using an Asterisk PBX, British Gymnastics chose to go with an Asterisk-based VoIP solution due to its overwhelming advantages over a proprietary hardware-based VoIP PBX.

British Gymnastics chose Telappliant as its Internet telephony solutions vendor having had previous experience trialing its VoIPtalk™ service and utilising its superior technical support services.

Solution
British Gymnastics approached Telappliant specifically asking for an Asterisk implementation. Although Telappliant has its own web-based IP PBX solution, called VoIPOffice™, British Gymnastics wanted to leverage their internal I.T. expertise to get the most out of a pure Asterisk platform. Telappliant was chosen to supply, configure and install the Asterisk solution.

Telappliant managed an out-of-hours migration strategy to ensure that BAGA’s users would be seamlessly migrated from the legacy telephone system to a fully VoIP-based solution. “I am very pleased. We now have a very stable PBX platform,” says Ben Willcox, IT Manager for British Gymnastics. “By migrating to an Asterisk platform, we have dramatically reduced our call costs while at the same time inheriting a feature rich, open platform which has also improved the mobility and efficiency of our organization. Telappliant provided us with support and assistance every step of the way to ensure that our migration was as seamless and straightforward as possible.”

Outcome
In the short term, the implementation of a single unified dial plan across all of the remote offices is the biggest improvement for British Gymnastics as it means that calls can be made between extensions regardless of the physical location at no cost. Remote users can use softphones on their laptops to make telephone calls back to the office from anywhere in the world. While inter-office calls are free, calls to any other destination can be made at huge cost savings using the Telappliant VoIPtalk Internet telephony service.

In the long term it offers BAGA the possibility to integrate the IP PBX with their existing operational and business support systems to provide additional services to their members, such as information services delivered via SMS. This is made possible by using the Asterisk server as a gateway to a third party bulk SMS provider.

Customer Comment
“There are numerous advantages of opting for an open source Asterisk solution. These include the ability to run on standard server hardware and provide easy integration points with our existing systems and applications. Asterisk has a global support community which means that my team has access to an extensive existing knowledge base. Furthermore there are no ongoing software licensing costs and adding features and fixing bugs is simply a software upgrade. An advantage of a software-based PBX is that we can now run a test/development server with identical configuration, to test any required changes before applying them to the live system, for just the hardware cost of a spare PC.”

“Despite the initial challenges with the implementation, the technical team at Telappliant were very helpful and responded very quickly to get all the issues resolved to ensure that we had a reliable, solid PBX platform,” said Ben Willcox.

Telappliant Develops Scalable Hosted Solution to Transform Serenata Flowers’ Sales Process for Greater Growth

About SerenataFlowers.com
SerenataFlowers.com is an independent online retailer of flowers and gift items based in the UK. Founded in 2004, Serenata runs 3 fulfillment centres across the UK - London, Birmingham and Manchester.

The Requirement
SerenataFlowers was relocating its customer service centre to new offices and was looking for a solution that would reduce its internal communications costs. Moreover, the cost of maintaining traditional phone systems soon had the company looking at new ways to efficiently handling the calls and reducing internal communication costs. Serenata wanted to maximise value with their customers to deliver services which enhance greater profitability and improve competitive advantage. The primary features of any call management solution they were to adapt had to have call queuing, music-on-hold, remote virtual extension and voicemail functions among others.

Challenge
Initially, Serenata looked at upgrading their traditional PBX solution. However, considering the comparable feature set in a traditional solution which would require a greater capital outlay as well as higher ongoing costs, Serenata turned to Telappliant for a VoIP solution.

Although the low cost calls and the advanced feature set made available via VoIP solutions were an attractive prospect, quality and reliability were of paramount concern to SerenataFlowers.

Solution
As a market leader in the UK with proven experience in VoIP services, SerenataFlowers chose Telappliant as its solutions provider. Telappliant’s technical team proposed SerenataFlowers with VoIPOffice Hosted Edition, a hosted service of Telappliant’s IP PBX offering. The Hosted Edition didn’t require substantial upfront investment and provided the advanced feature set that Serenata was looking for.

As a highly scalable solution, the hosted edition will continue to meet Serenata’s growing needs.

Outcome
Telappliant was able to implement the solution in a few weeks with negligible impact on service. Next up for Serenata is to use Telappliant Services to enhance call management
features such as call queuing and reporting. Serenata is also exploring the possibilities of implementing a bespoke IVR solution.

With one member of the Customer Service department based in New Zealand, Serenata wants to deploy more remote staff to enable round-the-clock customer service.

“This solution has resulted in more productive staff that can use remote extensions to work from home seamlessly. One member of our customer service team works from abroad in a different time-zone which enables us to offer 24/7 customer service. We are very excited about what the VoIP technology promise.”

Peter Ahl, Managing Director, SerenataFlowers.com

Business Challenge:

Increasing multiple international locations
Management reporting
Highly competitive marketplace
Maintaining renowned service

Communication Solutions:

- Mitel 3300 ICP/Teleworker
- Call traffic
- Line rentals
- ADSL
- Non-geographic numbers

Altogether better results:

- ROI delivered in 12 months
- Mobility
- IP Connecitivity across multiple sites
- Call centre
- Reduced call costs
- Revenue stream from non geographic numbers

Learn how Virgin Atlantic increased their customer satisfaction and agent retention

Making a difference in customer service and collections with Aspect Software solutions

Increasing Sales and Productivity with a Unified Solution from Aspect Software

PerformanceEdge™workforce management capabilities help company realise $2.5 million in annual savings.

"The Mitel Multimedia Contact Center enables our contact center staff to receive applications for council housing by text messages from a mobile phone that costs the public very little. 'Texting' is second nature to a large portion of the population and we are offering them the chance to access our public services in the way that suits them best."
Rob Neil,
Head of ICT Services, Ashford Borough Council

"Mitel's IP telephony is a business enabler that has proven easy to install and manage, with outstanding functionality. For Canary Wharf Group, telephony is a crucial communications tool. Although email plays a key role, our staff, tenants and visitors need a robust telephone network, and Mitel gives us that core backbone. The Mitel Networked Business Solutions has enabled us to build a scalable, flexible telephony network, based on the tried and trusted Mitel SX-2000 and the state of the art Mitel 3300 ICP, which will allow us to remain as flexible as our business."
Paul Stubbs,
Canary Wharf Group, Head of IT

"The Mitel IP Telephony system integrates seamlessly with the Cisco data network and voice calls no longer require a separate network to travel on. This has enabled us to centralize communications across the council, enabling the main accommodation sites to have the same access to communications. This has meant we have been able to improve communications both internally and with the public, thereby improving public services. The introduction of Mitel IP Telephony means that we can now offer our employees the option of working from home with office-like network access, which will help us to retain talented workers and improve their work-life balance."
Roy Grant,
Head of IT Operational Services, City of York Council

"With the Mitel IP communications network in place, we have built a springboard from which we can leap into the 21st century. Previously we were constrained by our infrastructure but putting in place such a flexible IP system has opened up new opportunities to work in a smarter, more efficient way."
Bob Estcourt,
Group Telecoms Manager, South Kensington Museums

Hosted PBX Solutions by Cosmics Unified Communications plc.
As a complement to conventional direct sales methods, Cosmics Unified Communications (www.cosmics.com) have developed a complete on line business ordering communications service for smaller business owners and start up companies for simple transition from the traditional hard phone environment into the world of Fortune 500 Hosted Voice over IP Telephony.
The service is activated and administered through the web with a simple pay as you go model by logging in to our website www.sweetch.co.uk.
Users with a ‘single’ existing DSL line can select multiple numbers, IP phones and services and a range of low cost preconfigured IP handsets, ATA phone adapters and soft phones.
Businesses and staff no matter where they are located can be up and trading in a matter of days accessing all their communications through the inbox - with access to free peer-to-peer calls and free conference calls and huge off-net call savings.
Cosmics solution is hosted in our secure datacenters, and will move and grow with your business no matter how many people you may have. Whatever your business, choose an IP telephony solution from Cosmics. It will be the last telephone system you'll ever need.
Channel reseller opportunities’ are available for virtual or full partition to our IPCENTRIX billing platform as well as Interconnect and white-labeling of our sweetch.com ordering website.

Why choose Cosmics
- Benefit from a high quality combined IP/ATM international network with 24/7 support and worldwide coverage.
- Integrate your telephony and computer networks in your headquarters, branch or affiliate offices.
- Perform all your communications e.g. phone, email, SMS, IM, customer profile access, database interrogation, CRM, etc. from your office LAN.
- Integrate your mobile phones with your office LAN for record keeping and centralized billing.
- Manage your Voicemail from your PC with total control over phone, through email, and online.
- Acquire international phone numbers in 60 countries as you grow.
- Integrate your off site workers in your telephony network no matter where they live.
- Reduce your communication costs and increase your productivity.
- Ensure a pleasant customer experience with efficient business processes.

Cosmics Unified Communications PLC
Hosted IP Telephony'Wholesale' Service Provider
Coppergate House
16 Brune Street
London
E1 7NJ England
Main Tel: +44-(0)203 031 8200
Fax: +44-(0)207 953 8485
Website: www.cosmics.com
Email: sales@cosmics.com

CVUK specialises in recruitment services for the UK’s retail sector, helping to provide a stream of quality personnel to fill vacancies from the sales floor to the board room. Read how implementing a ShoreTel Unified Communications system has increased productivity and customer service, by integrating voice service with CVUK’s client management application.