Williams Southern Ltd are a construction company with expertise in retail construction, shop fitting and forecourt construction projects. This includes major re-tanking, re-building and re-lining projects, as well as complex fuel infrastructure upgrades. They are also the industry ‘go-to’ electric forecourt specialist.
Challenge
Williams Southern needed a communication platform to meet the demands of modern hybrid working and to replace the need for employees to be office-bound five days a week. Williams Southern IT manager, Rob Taylor, explains: “When the covid pandemic started we began to use Teams for instant messaging and internal calls, but we had some frustrations with it. For example, we couldn’t ring mobile phones.
“Our old phone system did not work for employees who were working from home because it was a traditional, office-based system. We introduced Teams, but we needed to expand our use of the platform beyond internal communications.”
Williams Southern needed a communications system in place, which allowed their staff to work flexibly and remotely. This was a key factor for the client, as they have some staff who do not live locally.
Strategy
Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. Although Teams became universally popular during lockdown, many companies only utilise the chat and messaging aspects of the platform. Companies often find it difficult to get to grips with the depth of services that Teams offers. For example, Teams offers workspace chat and video conferencing, file storage, and application integration.
Nexus technical solutions architect, Barry Bryne, is widely considered to be an expert in his field and is a specialist when implementing Teams. Barry worked closely with Rob to figure out how Williams Southern wanted their calls to be handled and distributed. He designed menu structures with employees to meet the company’s communication requirements. This was all done with minimum disruption to the client, as Nexus carried out the work remotely.
The system was tested and Williams Southern employees provided feedback to Barry, who helped the client with some training issues and fixed a few technical issues that arose once the system was live. This gave the client confidence that the system was now robust enough for commercial use.
Solution
Nexus quickly and expertly delivered the following:
- Configured Microsoft Teams in Microsoft 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, as well as saving the company money.
Rob Taylor says: “We got what we wanted and it’s cheaper than our previous communications system.” He continued: “I have worked for fairly big organisations down to tiny ones. When you get a third party in to implement systems, the job is as good as the engineer you get. In this case, Barry was very good.”
