Clarkebond Engineering Services is a multi-disciplinary engineering and management consultancy operating from a network of three offices in the UK – London, Bristol and Exeter.
For over ten years they had been using the same telephone system, one that wasn’t accessible beyond their four walls. When the pandemic hit, like many businesses, Clarkebond encountered a number of challenges; they were not set up to accommodate staff working from home or holding client meetings remotely.
Clarkebond commissioned Nexus Open Systems Ltd, who are specialists in this field, to assist in the design and implementation of their Microsoft Teams with Phone System unified communications platform. As a part of Clarkebond’s ongoing changes around information technology, they elected to implement a Microsoft Teams telephony solution as a part of their Office 365 platform, with a view to replacing their existing Private Branch Exchange (PBX). The results were beyond expectation, enabling greater collaboration, flexibility and efficiency across all offices and beyond.
Challenge
With Clarkebond’s global client reach, and offices in three areas of the country, it was imperative that they modernised their telephony system to meet the changing needs of their staff and clients, during and following the pandemic. Bearing in mind that the average service life of a phone system is between 5 – 8 years and they were working with a phone system that was over 10 years old, the pandemic meant they were not able to function effectively as a business with the new working requirements.
With the existing telephony system, staff were unable to make and receive calls from home as well as being restricted from other ways of communicating externally such as video conferencing and instant messaging.
Lucy King, IT Manager at Clarkebond, says:
“As soon as the pandemic struck, we were quickly made aware of the pitfalls in our telephony system at the time. Our staff were unable to effectively work from home and, given the fact we have clients all around the world, we were not able to video conference them or keep up with our clients and competitors. We were made aware very suddenly that we needed a total overhaul of our current system.”
Strategy
The team at Nexus immediately knew what was needed to sync Clarkebond’s communication system with the rest of the modern world: to introduce a cloud-based system using Microsoft Teams. Clarkebond’s existing ISDN physical lines were replaced with SIP lines hosted in the cloud which deliver calls over the internet. This way, Clarkebond have more efficient and effective connectivity, internally and with clients.
Lucy King, IT Manager at Clarkebond, continues:
“Nexus knew exactly what they were doing, the process was incredibly efficient. I can’t believe we had the old system for so long. Productivity has hugely increased across the business and costs have dramatically reduced. We couldn’t be happier!”
Solution
Nexus performed the following to deliver this functionality in a very short period:
- Configured Microsoft Teams in Office 365
- Enabled Microsoft Teams with Phone System for external calling
- Configured each user with their own direct dial number
- Implemented an auto attendant for inbound calls providing a customised greeting and out-of-hours calling options
- Provided video-based training on how to use Microsoft Teams for external calling
- Provided number porting management to move their main telephone number from their previous provider to Microsoft Teams
- Provided ongoing technical support and assistance
The benefits included greater efficiency and collaborative working alongside a noticeably large and ongoing cost reduction.
