Background

A parts distributor (~20 employees) had an outdated IT and communications infrastructure, was looking for a new IT support partner, and an update to their CCTV system which had reached capacity.

A scope of work and budget was agreed, whilst capital funds were available for capital spending, there was to be no increase in day to day (revenue) spending. A fixed project management fee and contingency was agreed.

What made this project interesting was that it changed scope before it even really got started. Sitting in the office, we could hear the telephone exchange constantly clicking – each click is a ring. The question was asked how many calls are you losing because people abandon the call. We set out finding out how much the existing system was costing, and how we could find sufficient savings to fund a solution which would eventually radically transform the business, whilst not defocusing from the original objectives.

When you read this study, you’re probably going to come to the conclusion that the investment involved was significant, but in actuality a significant proportion of the project budget was funded from savings by changing providers, retiring legacy equipment, whilst at the same time enhancing the services.

Let’s look first at the business benefits we achieved

Having modern infrastructure allows a business to innovate quickly, cost effectively and implement risk mitigated ideas that drive business growth, and which makes a significant contribution to the bottom line.

We chose a cloud based phone solution, achieved significant savings in call charges from moving to Voice over IP from ISDN lines and removed the costs of maintaining the legacy equipment. Graphical data and statistics – the business now has real-time statistics on how many calls are abandoned, the telephone number of the abandoned call, how long a customer waits before a call is answered, the number of calls in the queue. Customers can now abandon a call and the system will call them back when an agent is free. So now the business can reallocate new resources to answering the phones when needed. We managed to reduce abandoned calls from 30% to less than 5% – that’s a significant benefit to the bottom line.

83% less abandoned calls

  • A robust, modern, and flexible infrastructure, communications and IT environment that designed and built from the ground up with security at its core;
  • Staff who are security aware;
  • Reduced reliance on manual input and a laserlike focus on electronic data exchange;
  • A focus on expanding the business through online trading using the web, social media and messaging platforms
  • A secure resilient infrastructure that’s flexible, any service can be provided anywhere maintained and supported by a responsive quality IT partner.
  • The ability to answer the phone from anywhere and securely access the business systems from the office or from home
  • An extremely modern CCTV system – with features that enabled the client to optimise retail areas with the aim of increasing revenue spend per customer.
  • A pathway to the future – the business now has a strategy & budget to move forward; as revenue increases and allows more investment the business;

Cabling

An extensive structured cabling system. Coloured cables enabled contractors to remove the old cabling without the risk of cutting off a vital service. The client now has the capability of running data, phones, cctv, and video all off the same cabling infrastruture.

CCTV

The existing analog CCTV system was replaced with a digital system. Some of the existing analog cameras were kept and converted to run over structured cabling, IP cameras were installed in new locations, and in high traffic areas where better resolution was required.

Network

The network is now secure and resilient, Internet connection is now achieved with two different providers using different network mediums (fibre, and microwave). The network is designed to load balance, and fail over automatically to the other should one fail. The network switches are dually connected such that if a switch fails, the other switches will reroute network traffic. Further the services were spreadover switches such that a switch failure would not take out all the phones, CCTV, or computers. The dual internet services cost less than the legacy network connection and provide network speeds more than 300% faster than the legacy systems.

Laptops

A tender document was written for an IT services company to supply, install and maintain desktops, laptops, secure file storage, email and threat management;

Phones

A trial was conducted to ensure that the VOIP was going to provide a reliable, quality service prior to the decommissioning of the old phone switch. The new phone system provided a wealth of new tools. No more engaged tones, and the caller knows where they are in the queue. Reports provide a visual and detailed analysis of the clients’ telesales performance over time.

The solution is capable of integration with teams, zoom, social media messaging platforms via a single communication portal.

Business System

The business application was running on Citrix – provided by the original IT partner. We moved to a hosted solution provided by the developers of the business application. Significant cost savings were achieved, with the added benefit that the business has a single point of contact if there’s an issue.

Room

Moving to the cloud enabled the decommissioning on premises kit. This provided the added benefit of providing more office space.