Weblight is the UK’s largest independent lighting solutions provider. Part of specialist lighting group, DW Group Holdings Limited, Weblight has over 20 years experience of providing energy efficient lighting design, installation and maintenance solutions to the Retail, Healthcare, Education, Commercial, Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics and Hospitality & Leisure sectors, whilst also working in partnership with many Facilities Management companies.
In order to service its customers, the company operates on both a national and regional basis and until 2012 had a network of five stockholding branches across the UK – each with its own PBX solution – plus a fleet of over 100 vehicles, still operating nationally, all fully stocked and fitted with GPS tracking.
With calls between sites costing approximately £400 per month, Weblight’s IT Manager Trevor Wright, had considered Voice over IP (VOIP) as an alternative solution to the disparate branch-based PBX telephone systems on a number of occasions, but the cost of hardware and installation across all the sites was always prohibitively expensive.
In 2011 Weblight began to experience change in its business that meant that the physical branch infrastructure across the UK was less critical and business functions gradually began to be centralised back into Head Office. In particular, the need for large volume lamp storage and stockholding at each branch had reduced dramatically, primarily due to technological advances in longer life lamps and LED technologies.
The decision was taken to reduce the number of branches and to implement a cloud-based IP Telephony solution from Intercity Technology to connect Head Office, the remaining branches,home workers and the mobile field and sales staff. With no hardware maintenance costs and all internal ‘on-net’ calls now being free of charge, the result was a dramatically reduced billing cost with total savings of around £12,000 per annum. External calls are routed seamlessly via local geographic numbers, so customers do not need to be aware when their calls are being re-routed. In addition to the high definition, seamless call routing, the cloud IP telephony solution also provides video conferencing facilities for meetings.
“The Intercity Technology hosted VOIP solution and video conferencing capability provided a higher quality and lower cost solution than the stand alone systems and that, added to the fact that there were no installation or maintenance costs, made the decision to implement it an easy one”
Trevor Wright, IT Manager, Weblight
Weblight had an existing MPLS network with Intercity Technology, so the IP telephony project followed on from the MPLS solution, forming part of Weblight’s overall IT consolidation. The network was upgraded, with no issues, to support the VOIP solution. It runs over a fiber connection into the Head Office site and ASDL lines for the remaining branch office and home workers. ‘It all works extremely well and for a very reasonable cost’ said Trevor Wright.
All office-based users and home workers were provided with Polycom handsets that automatically boot up with their profile once plugged into the network. The system features a single central short-code dialling directory, voicemail, a number of virtual audio conference rooms and three-way conferencing, from every desk phone. The voice quality of the Polycom HD (high definition) solution was a major plus point feature for Weblight. They trialled two systems – HD and non-HD and the difference in the quality was, in Trevor Wright’s words ‘amazing’.
“We receive an excellent service from Intercity Technology. They are very responsive to service calls and with their proactive monitoring of the network and telephony solution, they contact us in advance if they identify any potential issues and always resolve them quickly.”
Trevor Wright, IT Manager, Weblight
The Cloud Communications services provided by Intercity Technology has given Weblight a flexible infrastructure that is managed end-to-end by an experienced and committed team. The service is supported by a 24-hour support desk and customised portal that gives them a wealth of real-time and historical data.