Video communications solution case study
Top UK Property Firm Increases Business Efficiency While Reducing Travel with Wire One (now BT Conferencing), LifeSize and Taalus.
Established in 1855, Carter Jonas is a multidisciplinary firm of property consultants with a broad portfolio of services dealing with all aspects of residential, rural and commercial property, and with specialist development, planning, and minerals and waste management teams. The firm has 19 office locations throughout England and Wales, five of which are in central London. Carter Jonas’ rural division manages over 750,000 acres on behalf of its clients.
Due to the nature of their business, the firm’s locations are widely dispersed throughout the region and many offices are located in remote or rural areas. Travel between these offices is often difficult and costly. With fuel prices persistently on the rise, the simple cost of driving to and from one of Carter Jonas’ offices not only meant a full day of travel at times, but also a big expense for the company.
According to Pat Hastings, IT Director at Carter Jonas, a great deal of corporate focus centred on maximising efficiency and cutting unnecessary costs. Travel became an obvious target for this when analysing budget spend and was an area in which Carter Jonas needed a solution.
"Reducing travel costs was the underlying driver for instigating an interest in visual communications,” Pat Hastings said. “Employees were driving to and from offices up to 3 times a week,” he explains. “Not only was a this a significant expense to the firm, it wasn’t in line with the firm’s environmental policy where we are trying to minimise our environmental impact"
"Also, we recently invested in an MPLS network, which unlocked the potential for video across the business. It was evident that video would also provide an added advantage of improved communication with key clients, like The Crown Estate,"
- Pat Hastings
Carter Jonas began searching for a video communications solution. After an initial trial with a recommended video product, they found that the definition quality was limited. To further investigate market solutions, Carter Jonas turned to their IT installation supplier, Taalus Ltd, for a recommendation. Taalus recommended Wire One (now BT Conferencing), who was able to demonstrate functionality of several video communications systems on the market and ultimately to find the right solution to fit their needs.
After weighing up the options, and ultimately being discouraged by the low image quality of the other systems demonstrated, Pat Hastings and his team at Carter Jonas selected a combination of LifeSize HD video and a Codian bridge as the best solution.
"Wire One (now BT Conferencing) stepped in to review the challenges we were trying to address and came back with, not only a higher quality solution, but also a more cost effective and complete solution,"
- Pat Hastings -
"The LifeSize system is better suited to our business needs and expectations than anything else we’ve seen."
LifeSize® Team™ HD video systems were installed by Taalus in meeting rooms across 11 of the 18 offices as well as an external MCU (multipoint control unit), which allows more than three individual video conference units to connect together to form a multiparty video conference session) and gateway.
Wire One supplied the full solution, including the infrastructure elements, which Carter Jonas felt provided the company with a great advantage. After the installation, Wire One also provided Carter Jonas with a training structure which would allow non-technical end users to quickly learn how to use the system. This way, an employee could walk into a conference room, push a button, and instantly connect a call without the assistance of IT or technical staff.
Carter Jonas also implemented a system for the procedure of booking meetings. In this manner, the administration and reception staff can book the meetings via a third party managed services system in Microsoft Outlook.
The solution from Wire One, with the LifeSize HD video elements at the heart, has improved the way Carter Jonas does business.
Although the solution has only been active for a few months, usage continues to increase and management sees a significant difference in how Carter Jonas employees communicate. Because much of the long distance travel has been eliminated, Carter Jonas employees now have easy access to communication options and are meeting more often among different office locations. The communication technology is even being used for softer communication efforts, such as delivering birthday messages and setting up more informal meetings.
In addition, with seven divisions in the firm, the implementation of video conferencing provided the opportunity to improve cross divisional communications, employee morale and productivity levels.
Carter Jonas is able to offer multisite calls via their Codian bridge, which has been popular with many of their clients, including law firms, who use a lot of video conferencing. In addition, the systems have positively impacted on the service they offer customers, as decision-making has been accelerated and knowledge-share, among employees, has increased.
The environmental benefits are becoming more apparent as the solution is being adopted and now video conferencing can be integrated into Carter Jonas’ environmental policy.
"Carter Jonas is delighted with the LifeSize solution that Wire One has implemented, based on even the short term results. We are now looking at adding more sites and additional products, such as desk cameras for more one-to-one spontaneous conferencing. The end to end solution approach that Wire One has demonstrated enables us to feel confident in the results and payback we are looking to achieve over the next 2 years."
- Pat Hastings
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