For consultants, it’s absolutely critical to be able to quickly communicate with anyone at any time. Both revenue and customer satisfaction often depend on getting in touch with the right person right away – or on ensuring that they can get in touch with you.

And with the combination of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Quintum Technologies’ Tenor VoIP gateway, German IT consultancy Plan-B has been able to do exactly that. In fact, by enabling its consultants to overcome the constraints of space and time, Plan-B’s state-of-the-art communications environment has significantly boosted staff productivity while helping the company save thousands in telecommunications costs.

Plan-B’s consultants all have Office Communicator and Outlook running on their personal computing devices, which include laptops and PDAs. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 will be running on a server in the company’s main office. A Quintum Tenor BX gateway sits between that server and the company’s PBX.

This setup allows consultants to use their computing devices as phones. For audio input/output, they use Bluetooth headsets, USB-connected headsets, or the speakers and microphone built into their laptops. Communicator acts as a VoIP client, allowing voice traffic to travel over the office LAN or the Internet to the Office Communications Server 2007.

This server connects to the Quintum gateway, which in turn connects to the PBX. This allows voice traffic to move freely between the company’s LAN and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Voice traffic can also move between the company’s LAN and the Internet via its router. This simple yet effective combination enables a wide range of high value communications capabilities that enable Plan-B to perform at tremendous efficiency.

These capabilities include:

ultimate mobility. The client’s staff can answer their office phones from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an Internet connection. Staff can have one phone number, and any calls coming in from the PSTN are passed through the Tenor VoIP gateway to Office Communication Server 2007. Office Communication Server 2007 can be configured to call a staff member via a Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client running on their laptop or PDA, or to a telephone on a PBX voice network, or a landline or cell phone connected through the PSTN.

Least cost routing. The client’s staff can reach their company’s local offices from anywhere in the world via the Internet – which means they can call domestic and international locations from anywhere in the world and only pay the in-country rate. The Tenor VoIP gateways can then switch the calls to the local PBX or PSTN.

Plan-B selected Quintum’s Tenor VoIP gateway solution for a variety of reasons, including its support for ISDN (a must for interfacing with European PBXs) and its ease of installation. Quintum gateways also provide failover and compression features that are invaluable for ensuring the reliability, efficiency and quality of its VoIP calls.

“Quintum gave us a fast, simple way to add voice to our Microsoft-enabled communications and collaboration environment,” says Alan Dutton, head of Plan-B’s unified communications practice. “As a result, we can work smarter and faster than ever with significantly reduced telecommunications costs.”

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.

Newcastle NHS Trust's upgrade to Siemens HiPath 8000 delivers scalability and an Open Communications philosophy with an open standards-based platform on which to integrate new applications and devices. Users now have the portability to work anywhere within the corporate network without losing their phone number of voice preferences. The OpenScape application lets users locate and collaborate more easily resulting in greater productivity, plus in a hospital environment being able to assemble teams of doctors rapidly can also save lives. As a result, the Trust now has one of the most advanced communications network in the NHS, applications can be easily integrated into the Trust's new SIP-based communications platform, carrier grade resilience ensures that even calls in progress are not lost and Newcastle NHS Trust has a partner in Siemens that it can rely upon.

VIBRANT MEDIA ADOPTS TELAPPLIANT VOIPOFFICE IP PBX FOR A SCALABLE, FLEXIBLE AND RELIABLE CALL MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

The Business Environment
Vibrant Media is an established advertising solutions provider reaching markets worldwide. Providing contextual advertising solutions to leading publishing companies, Vibrant Media enables an international network of leading web publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of advertising relationships and maximise their revenue potential.

Established in 2000, Vibrant Media spans four offices in two continents - San Francisco, New York, London and Hamburg – with over 120 staff. When Vibrant Media was looking to move offices to Central London, they had discussions with their numbering provider who stated that it was not possible for them to take their existing telephone number from one exchange to another despite being less than a mile apart.

Vibrant Media wanted a flexible, reliable and scalable option that would allow them to deploy handsets throughout their private network to connect to staff around the world and also realise substantial cost-savings. Since its offices are spread across two continents, inter-office calling costs were getting too high. As Vibrant Media’s business grew, it needed its phone system to expand with it.

Vibrant Media’s foremost concern was bandwidth and a solution that would not compromise on voice quality.

The Solution
Vibrant Media required the consolidation of both voice and data traffic over their existing Internet link. Demands of email, web browsing, work on their production network and file replication of the corporate network all had to compete for bandwidth. Telappliant’s quality of service (QoS) based voice over IP solution was the only one that met their requirements as a cost-effective, robust and scalable offering.

Telappliant’s technical team proposed Vibrant Media with VoIPOffice Standalone Edition, a site-based version of Telappliant’s IP PBX offering. VoIPOffice provided the diverse applications that their business environment necessitated and the advanced customer support that they were looking for.

The Outcome
Telappliant VoIPOffice IP PBX enabled Vibrant Media to route inbound calls to anywhere within their enterprise and provide least cost routing for outbound calls. Vibrant Media was also able to scale the system and deploy several advanced high-end IP telephones into their branch offices to easily connect to staff located in other countries.
“Having VoIP handsets in our remote offices means we can call them for free. We’re contemplating deploying VoIPOffice to those locations and trunking directly to them,” says James Bromberger of Vibrant Media. “We are extremely happy with the VoIPOffice solution put in by Telappliant and the ongoing support that we were looking for.”
Superior Quality and Reliability
Telappliant’s VoIP implementation has been a definite success with Vibrant Media enjoying several significant business benefits.

James Bromberger said, “Our previous experience with Telappliant led us back to them. Our IP PBX solution is great and having a competent company run it is invaluable. The flexibility of a true VoIP system without the commercial lock-in of other proprietary manufacturers means I can expand this system more rapidly and cheaper.

“Replacing legacy technology with VoIP handsets, such as the Snom 360, has been great. Coupled with my corporate VPN, I can now log in with a softphone when I am not in the office to place and receive my calls. This has been really useful when I am traveling.”

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

Customer needs:
• Quantify in-store traffic
• Improved connectivity and flexibility
• User friendly solution
• Control over solution at Head Office

Communication Solutions:
• Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP)
• Mitel IP phones
• LCR and line rental

Altogether Better Results:
• Standardised operating procedures
• Increased control over communications
• Cost savings
• Improved intersite communications

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

Business challenge

- Reduced costs across portfolio
- Flexible working
- Lower call costs
- Simplified phone systems
- One contact for telephony needs
- Communications solutions

Total service provision
- Mitel 3300 ICP
- Migration to IP telephony
- BT wholesale line rentals
- Call routing
- System maintenance
- VoIP
- Service support and system maintenance
- ADSL
- CAT 5 structured cabling
- Call logger
- Bespoke account management

Altogether better results:

- Staff retention through flexible working options
- Easy management of systems
- Central contol over all sites' systems
- Increased systems resilience
- Reduced costs via toll bypass

Business challenge

- Install a new reliable, scalable and cost effective solution
- Leverage existing data network infrastructure
- Integrate seamlessly with existing PBX telephone systems
- Ability to support remote workers and add on applications in the future
- Support future growth of the college

Communication Solutions:

- Mitel 3300 ICP
- Mitel Teleworker Solution
- Direct connect ISDN30
- Call routing
- Line rental
- Analogue lines

Altogether better results:

- College leveraged existing data infrastructure by seamlessley integrating voice on the network
- Migrated an IP communciation solution to existing data network and PBX telephone systems therefore protecting intial investment
- Installed a next generation communication system that provides a foundation to add on applications to support ongoing growth and five year busienss plan

Business challenge

- Support for aggressive store openings
- Cost reduction across portfolio
- Simple system administration to cope with high staff turnover

Communication solutions

- Total service provisions
- Call routing
- BT Wholesale line rentals
- IP enabled TDM technology
- Avaya IP Office
- CAT 5 structured cabling
- 24-7 support
- Bespoke account management

Altogether better results

- Store openings met in time
- Outsourced telecoms provider sympathetic to its needs
- Reduced cost of ownership on telecoms
- Simple adds, moves and changes and other administration tools

Puma is one of the world’s leading sports and lifestyle companies, and has a long-term mission of becoming the most desirable Sportlifestyle brand. This case studye descripes how the SwyxWare solution was installed at all of Puma’s offices and interconnected via the company’s Intranet, connecting its three UK operations together in a single network.

With one of the largest and most robust enterprise network infrastructures in the world, Nortel connects its 30,000+ global and extremely mobile workforce, along with hundreds of external partner companies, and uses its own unified communications solution to enhance employee quality of experience and drive down total cost of ownership.

Oregon-based Columbia Sportswear is a leading manufacturer of outdoor apparel. Its employees conduct business with suppliers and retailers around the world, and the company frequently searches for ways to increase the efficiency and productivity of its workers who travel. Columbia had already deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 for instant messaging (IM) and presence awareness. It sought to expand its employees’ communications options by upgrading to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and deploying IP-based devices from LG-Nortel and GN. Now employees have enhanced real-time communications capabilities, including audio, video, and Web con-ferencing and software-powered voice over IP (VoIP). Columbia also avoided the cost of an upgrade to VoIP networks and eliminated the use of public IM applications.

More information at: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000787

"With our new IP solution from Mitel we have already made significant progress and we are excited about the opportunities to implement a standard infrastructure which we can take with us and plug in wherever we are."
"The technology will be in place for the Wentworth Seniors Open in August and the HSBC World Match Play in October, both being held at Wentworth Club. Managing our communications internally at a tournament makes a huge difference. Moving forward, we have great vision for the future to extend this into many more of our tournaments."
Mark Lichtenhein,
chief information officer, The European Tour

Although many enterprises are eager to deploy converged voice and data

applications and services over IP, they see their legacy PBX systems and

upfront costs as roadblocks to the enhanced capabilities that IP would

bring. This paper demonstrates that legacy PBX equipment does not

have to be replaced for enterprises to begin a phased migration to IP

convergence. Dialogic® media gateway appliances make the

implementation of IP technology in PBX systems possible right

now, and with low upfront investment costs.

"We were attracted to IP Telephony because we were upgrading our communications network and needed a solution that would provide us flexibility in deployment. We needed a system that would enable us to affordably extend the opening hours of the call center. We chose the Mitel 3300 Integrated Communications Platform because it provides this flexibility, enabling call center agents to work from home and remote agents to work in other areas of the council. Moreover, we were especially taken with the Mitel 6100 Contact Center Solutions because of the ease of management and reporting it provides."
Rob Neil,
Head of ICT Services, Ashford Borough Council

"Mitel definitely has one of the leading IP solutions. We were reassured in the number of companies that had the 3300 ICP and it works perfectly with our existing Cisco data infrastructure."
David Griffiths,
IT Director, Pannone & Partners

"Delivering the best possible customer service to our clients is of paramount importance to us and by moving to an IP environment we can communicate far more efficiently both internally and externally. Our staff are constantly sharing information about destinations and experiences and the Mitel communications system allows them to do that far more easily and cost effectively. We anticipate making a significant leap forward in our level of customer service in addition to enviable cost savings."
Philip Napleton, IT Director,
Abercrombie and Kent

"We were impressed with the Mitel IP solution from the start as it is cost-effective, reliable and scalable and has enabled us to deploy one seamless network. The IP solution is a real business enabler allowing us to deploy applications that change and improve the way employees work which in return increases productivity and customer service."
Cham Bain Smith,Assistant IT
Manager, Eden Brown

"With a blank canvas to work from we were presented with a fantastic opportunity to analyze exactly what we needed from our telecommunications infrastructure and consider all the options.We had specific objectives we needed to achieve and high expectations so the pressure was on to identify the best possible solution."
Richard McDermott
head of ITC at Fortis Guernsey

"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

"The more cost-effective solutions we employ, the more children we can help"
Ed Granger-Happ
Save the Children's chief technology officer

"We feel like we now have the right voice and data network in place to meet our goals and take the Society forward on the right foot. Our Mitel system makes the old network seem like tin cans on a piece of string, yet the new set-up has cost us nothing. Ongoing cost savings from using IP communications mean we have effectively spent nothing installing the Mitel network. We can now work from any location, all of our connected offices can share documents and applications, and the cost of making calls and sending emails throughout the Society has been cut dramatically. We can also work more effectively, and that's very important to us as a charity, as we can spend more time doing the important things such as fundraising for autism."
Colin Sharp,
IT Manager, Scottish Society for Autism

Coleg Glan Hafren is Cardiff’s largest further education college, spread over four sites serving 600 staff and 13,000 students. The college has transformed its communications network by replacing an ageing managed voice system with ShoreTel’s IP Unified Communications system. This distributed phone system with integrated voice applications and intuitive management interface, has enabled the College to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve the caller experience.

DayMen International designs and distributes photographic equipment. IP connectivity between locations has led to both improved customer service and cost savings, with minimal training needed to achieve high user satisfaction.