This Serviced Office company operated a number of offices and wanted a telephony system which met their own needs as well as those of their tenants. Some of the key services required were: integration with security and door entry systems; free calls between sites; access from all offices; manageable license fees; unified communications i.e. with mobile and email; ability to integrate applications via APIs with the telephone system.

Working closely with the customer in an advisory capacity, they selected an MS Windows based IP-PBX which is hosted in a JPCiHosting Data Centre and is connected to the wider telephony world via IP Direct Connect (IPDC) - a SIP - based service provided by JPCi/Gamma. The service is delivered over JPCi Telecom's Annex-M ADSL service. The customer has a choice of IP phones to use, as well as soft-phones; it enables the free site to site calls required; is cost-effective in terms of scalability and requires minimal support from the end customer.

The concept behind this organisation is that, if a customer is in one town looking for a car, whoever they go to, dealership-wise, will be part of the same group. From a communications point of view this means there is a need to link in with all the other dealerships and trade parts within the group, resulting in massive levels of inter-site traffic. All the sites share operational centres and might need to communicate in order, for example, to check with another dealership to see if they have a certain specification of car, so they can work together on a part exchange.

The group had upgraded to Mitel 3300 PBX phone systems over the last 2 years and has now decided to take this project to phase 2, which is to enable SIP trunks on each site in order to offer free calls between all branches. Previously the group were all using ISDN.

As the group was using ISDN, it was invoicing £3,000 on phone calls every month. 60% of this was on inter-site traffic meaning that they stood to make savings of £1,800 each month by moving to a new system that would provide free site-to-site calls.

The group decided to invest in Gamma SIP trunks in order to make significant savings in the long-term. They made an investment of £1,000 per site on upgrade. Every month they now make a saving of £1,800 meaning that effectively two sites a month are paying back their investment.

A small manufacturing company was expanding quickly and was operating using just one PSTN line with a number of wireless handsets off the one number. Transferring calls between departments was difficult and appeared unprofessional to the caller. If the line was busy, they had no way of handling the next call.

The broadband line was upgraded to ADSL Annex-M, which provided a much higher data upload rate. This enabled the single broadband line to share both data and voice over the one broadband link ,with Quality of Service applied to the line, ensuring that speech quality was not compromised. Our FeaturePlus hosted telephony service was overlaid on to the broadband service, enabling the customer to manage all calls with the professionalism and increase in productivity they required. Call charges were also reduced compared with the previous BT bills.

A newly converted Managed Office services company wanted to provide telephony services to its customers. These would range from single-person customer through to multi-tenanted offices of up to fifteen staff. The management company wanted control over the bills for individual customers at the same time as giving the customers the greatest flexibility in how they used their telephone system; total privacy from other users and complete self management of the system.

To cover such a large number of simultaneous callers - up to twenty-five, we had to bond a number of ADSL Annex-M broadband lines to ensure that sufficient connectivity was available. FeaturePlus is fully self-managed and so relieved the management company of any requirement to administer the system. It is also scalable up to many users across multiple sites and so enabled those tenants who had satellite offices, to make free calls between sites, significantly reducing their inter-office call charges.

With over 80 sites throughout the UK, the TGWU was spending a substantial amount making site-to-site calls. The company was also undergoing continuous changes, such as internal relocations and resizing, and needed a telephony system which was flexible and easy to transfer. Its previous phone system was complex and time consuming to support and maintain.

The TGWU required a more flexible and lower cost phone system and the Union didn't want to be stuck with a phone system that required ongoing investment. TGWU were also in need of an entire upgrade of its old and outdated phone systems, and required a service that offered new and improved features.

The Mitel-based Communicator system is especially designed for multi site businesses and the system aims to reduce the overall cost of telephony.

Of particular benefit to the TGWU is the Communicator's offering of free site-to-site calls, having 80 sites across the UK, which need to keep in touch with one another. Free calls also extend to employees who work from home, in distributed offices or international satellite offices. The system also gives all staff access to their own voicemail, auto attendant and hunt groups, meaning that customer calls will never be lost. The cost saving was substantial. The system saves money by reducing the manpower costs involved in managing the system, on top of the free site-to-site calls. The system is also easily scalable and flexible for a company that is expanding, shrinking, or on the move. The company only has to pay for what it needs.

"Communicator is treated as one phone system per company as opposed to having one phone system per site. This is much easier to manage, and makes the billing much more straightforward for the reseller and the end user."
 
Richard Bligh, Marketing Director at Gamma Telecom