NextiraOne Unified Communications Solution Provides Collaborative Work Environment for Chartered Accountants

ICAEW upgrades to Unified Communications platform

[lichfield] – 17th November, 2009. NextiraOne, Europe’s leading expert in communications services, has provided a new Unified Communications platform for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Completed earlier this year the project is now fully operational and is enabling the ICAEW to improve its quality of service and reduce its telephony and operating costs through the integration of voice, video and data networks and the introduction of advanced collaboration tools.

The ICAEW is the largest professional accountancy organisation in Europe and has over 132,000 members who run and advise businesses across every economic sector, spanning 165 countries and counting a number of the FTSE CEOs and FDs as its members. The ICAEW wanted to create a new voice, video and data environment that would enhance its business efficiency and quality of service, encourage collaborative working, whilst managing and reducing overall telephony costs, and ensuring business continuity. With its Head Office in London and an office in Milton Keynes, the ICAEW also has regional and international offices and a significant number of home-workers, all of whom needed to be connected in an efficient and cost-effective way through the new advanced voice, video and data communications system.

The infrastructure designed and implemented by NextiraOne for the ICAEW provides a combined solution based on technology from both Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco. NextiraOne used the best of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise technology for the IP telephony solution and the Contact Centre, plus a range of advanced applications for the working environment and introduced Cisco switching for local area networking at the London and Milton Keynes sites.

The result is a fully integrated Unified Communications system, providing an advanced IP Telephony platform supporting 650 users across the business, including the Head Office in London, an office in Milton Keynes, international and regional offices and around 140 home-workers.  Based around an Alcatel-Lucent Omni-PCX Enterprise platform, the Unified Communications infrastructure has created an enhanced working environment, integrating many applications designed to improve efficiency and promote collaborative working, including My Teamwork, My Messaging, My Phone, One Number and My Instant Communicator, and providing a fully integrated desktop with Unified Inbox.

The NextiraOne solution also includes an Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch Premium Contact Centre which allows the ICAEW to monitor and record calls, measure performance and analyse the results so that improvements can be made to the quality of service to callers, such as better response times. The Contact Centre solution also includes the Alcatel-Lucent desktop wallboard solution and NICE IP Voice Recording.

NextiraOne’s core telephony solution incorporated several levels of resilience, based on dual servers with spatial redundancy in ICAEW’s Data Centres in Milton Keynes and London, designed to ensure business continuity and provide Disaster Recovery. NextiraOne also provides comprehensive support and maintenance for the ICAEW’s infrastructure through a Managed Services Contract and has worked closely with the ICAEW to produce training materials.

The new communications platform has significantly improved the way the ICAEW communicates both internally and with its clients and provides a springboard for the ICAEW’s ambition to expand internationally. NextiraOne’s substantial European presence in 17 countries was a significant factor in the ICAEW’s choice of the company as its partner. This was complemented by NextiraOne’s ability to understand the business case and demonstrate the practical benefits that its solution would have in increasing productivity and business efficiency.

“We had clear strategic objectives in implementing the new Unified Communications system,” says Bill Wilson, Director of IT at the ICAEW. “Collaborative working was top of our wish list, along with improved quality of service and system reliability. NextiraOne showed us how we could achieve all this and also find significant reductions in operating costs. NextiraOne approached the project from a business perspective, seeing the technology as a mean to provide the benefits we needed.”

NextiraOne is Europe’s leading expert in communications services and has a direct sales and service presence in 17 countries, serving more than 60,000 customers. The company  designs, installs, maintains and supports sustainable solutions to meet the communications needs of its customers - from voice, data and video to mobility, security and applications. Working with the world’s leading technology companies, NextiraOne provides end-to-end sustainable communications solutions to deliver measurable business benefits to its customers.

Steven Skakel, Managing Director UK & Ireland at NextiraOne, said: “Using Unified Communications and collaboration tools was the ideal solution for an organisation like the ICAEW and we were able to deliver a scalable solution which can grow with the expansion of the ICAEW’s international business. Our experts understand the business drivers of major organisations like the ICAEW and we were able to propose and implement a tailored solution designed to deliver specific and tangible benefits.”