DC Advisory Partners

Company: DC Advisory Partners PLC

Solution: Hosted IP Telephony

Sector: Recruitment

The Background

Based in the heart of the City of London, DC Advisory Partners (formerly Close Brothers Corporate Finance) is a leading, pan-European, corporate finance house offering independent advice in Mergers and Acquisitions, Debt Raisings, Restructuring and Public Offerings.

DC Advisory Partners (DCAP) operates internationally, employing more than 200 practitioners across Europe and a sister network throughout Asia and the US, comprising an additional 300 staff.

For a global financial company the size and influence of DCAP, a reliable and robust communications infrastructure is business critical. If the phone lines were not 100% trustworthy aspects of work would suffer. 

The Challenge

DCAP were due to move offices and so an internal assessment was given to their 8 year old phone system. It was felt that the previous system was not as robust as required; it was an in-house system there was a single point of failure, and so if the system went down a loss of communications would be extremely costly to the business. Furthermore, the IT team too had changed in dynamic and together with company re-structuring it was felt that the old system needed changing. 

DCAP therefore required a new flexible and scalable unified communications solution that offered the ability to work remotely and included a full Disaster Recovery solution as well as reflect its status as a leading financial organisation.

The solution also needed to establish an MPLS Core Network between European offices so that the UC infrastructure delivered in the UK could also be rolled out across all locations. 

The Solution

DCAP approached Voicenet Solutions to offer all aspects of communications, to create a bespoke best-of-breed solution that they simply could not have purchased ‘off the shelf’.

Other benefits included the simplicity of the fixed cost model offered, ease of remote working and features such as the ability to access Voice Messaging remotely as well as easily making routing changes via a web portal.

The hardware offered was as follows:
•  Cisco 7941s for Standard Users
•  Cisco 7961s for Personal Assistants
•  Polycom Soundstation2 for Conferencing
•  Polycom Video Conferencing Units

In the period prior to implementation Voicenet Solutions also provided DCAP with an MPLS Network between the London and Manchester offices as well as Video Conferencing Solution. 

The Results

The unified communications solution has made an instant impact. Unified communications enables DCAP to integrate voice, data and video to ensure that information is transferred throughout the business. Video conferencing technology has also enabled its users to stay in touch without the need to travel.

Despite the “best-of-Breed” offering and additional infrastructure features, Voicenet Solutions still managed to offer the financial servicing company substantial savings on their previous system. 

Total Communications Savings:

• In system costs - £123,782.00
• Monthly savings -  £1,120.00
• Annual savings - £13,440.00
• 5 year saving £190,982.00

With such savings and additional communications benefits it is no surprise that DCAP would be happy to recommend Voicenet Solutions to any other businesses.

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