CIBER UK Ltd enhance inter-office communications with advanced Web Collaboration tools
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Nowcomm has recently migrated CIBER UK’s Cisco IP telephony system to an advanced unified communications infrastructure incorporating the latest audio, web and video collaboration platform – Unified Meeting Place Express.
Why was it required – Business Challenges:
CIBER is an international IT software provider, operating in a total of 18 countries with 8,000 employees and annual revenues of approximately $1 billion. They had been successfully running a Cisco IP Telephony architecture for a number of years however they were still paying an outsourced teleconference provider for multi-party calls within the business. This was costing CIBER significant monthly charges for very little else other than a group phone call. Nowcomm were asked to come and discuss the options available for implementing new technologies in the current environment.
What will be implemented – Solution:
In 2008 CIBER needed to upgrade the current Cisco IP Telephony system from 4.1 to 6.1 and commissioned Nowcomm to perform the task after the original integrator was removed due to poor performance. As part of the initial consultancy exercise it soon became clear that advancements within Cisco’s Unified Communications portfolio meant that CIBER could deliver added value back to the business through integrating more intelligent applications across the company’s IP infrastructure. As part of Cisco Workspace Licensing programme, Cisco Unified Meeting Place Express was identified as offering the business a stable platform to host group teleconferences, whilst also adding advanced web collaboration features and personal video conferencing. The system isn’t just open to CIBER employees but is accessible from anywhere over the Internet too, which meant that CIBER could invite customers and suppliers to join a richer virtual meeting experience.
CIBER also identified the usefulness of Meeting Place for the IT helpdesk as a remote control application. CIBER’s helpdesk no longer have to rely on an end user to describe what they are seeing on their PC screen and then relay step-by-step instructions back over the phone, as the helpdesk operative can actually see the screen for themselves and take direct control of the machine to fix any issues immediately. This has enhanced the Service Levels that the CIBER IT department gives back to employees as well as to business clients, meaning that the return on CIBER’s investment for this solution can be directly related to physical travel and time cost savings, carbon reduction, improved internal helpdesk processes and customer satisfaction!
CIBER chose to deploy the special Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing model on their new systems, meaning that their next steps are to introduce a number of complimentary Unified Communications applications to further extend the benefits and value obtained from the system to empower an increasingly mobile workforce – such as Presence with enterprise-class instant messenger, full Unified Voice Messaging, softphone and smartphone clients.