ISS

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Background

ISS is one of the world's largest facility services providers, with 485,000 employees worldwide and more than 200,000 business customers. Britannic's relationship with ISS UK started in 2002 when ISS were facing escalating costs and pressure on their IT resource.  

Britannic identified that the best solution for ISS at that time was a managed service to deliver greater efficiencies and clearer management reporting. This was the start of a consultative partnership that has helped ISS formulate their telephony direction over the last 9 years.  Britannic is now working in partnership on the next phase, developing a 5 year strategic plan across their whole ICT infrastructure.

Requirements

When ISS were consolidating a number of businesses into a centralised Head Office in Woking with a second office in London for site resilience, they looked to Britannic to manage their diverse requirements.

Britannic and ISS looked at the business structure and established that there were significant efficiencies and business advantages to be gained by providing ISS staff with the anytime, anywhere concept of working. The 45,000 ISS UK staff are very mobile, with many of them moving between offices, working from home and remote locations.

An ISS Centralised Telephony platform could be created using IP Telephony which would extend their system to regional sites using their WAN.

Moving to Hot Desk operation would maximise the office space, while leveraging IP Telephony would provide for Home Working where necessary.  ISS also needed a solution for fixed geographic numbers.

A resilient Time and Attendance system, enabling staff to log on and off shift is crucial to ISS' business model. ISS required a resilient infrastructure and flexible line provision to cater for swift expansion and manage the massive spikes in usage at peak times. They also wanted to reduce the number of analogue lines which were used for faxes throughout the offices.

Finally, the provision of audio and video conferencing would enable more efficient communications. It was important that ISS were able to manage and implement all these changes easily.

Challenges

The nature of facilities management work means that there are a very large number of incoming calls for clocking on / off shifts at certain times of the day, with no line usage for the rest of the day.

High line usage  of existing ISDN Lines, with their  costly rentals and system interface cards, were  very inefficient and could be a bottleneck as business increased. Providing a flexible and cost effective system of line allocation was key.
The move to IP Telephony from TDM and integration to their Cisco network was a challenge as ISS had no experience in IP Telephony. Catering for managers who might need to deal with sensitive calls while in an open plan, hot-desk  environment was a further challenge to overcome.

Solution

Britannic provided a 100MB MPLS Network with SIP Trunks, including back up circuits, which provided:

• Massive  savings for both fixed and mobile calls and as many low cost lines as required
• A highly flexible time and attendance system that could cater for as many calls as required without investing in fixed lines
• Consolidated voice, data and video in one main circuit with additional resilience via the back-up circuits

The Mitel IP Telephony system fulfilled all of ISS' requirements and provided centralised operation between the two main sites in Woking and London. The Mitel IP Phones can be extended to remote sites using the WAN whilst still providing the ability to install remote gateways if site resilience is important. Resilience has been implemented between the main sites so if there is any failure in the main office then lines and phones would rehome to the second office.

Mitel applications with audio and web conferencing have been employed, as well as Tandberg Video Conferencing, which uses IP between sites with simple point and click set ups.

Oak call logging now enables re-charging within ISS, and provides the opportunity to look at departmental costs, whilst the GSM Gateway has reduced the cost of calls to mobiles.

Non Geographic numbers (NGNs) have been provided for all users, using these as DDI numbers to guarantee that users would retain the same number within ISS, regardless of which office they moved to. This also provided a second level of resilience so that calls could be diverted individually if necessary.

Every user has been given a fax to email number so that they can receive faxes to their desktop, thus reducing the requirement for fixed faxes. Cordless headsets and handsets, along with mobile twinning allow managers and users to walk away from their desk mid-call and to take private calls when necessary.

Benefits

Reduced costs:
SIP Trunks reduced line & call costs significantly
Reduce costs via the GSM Gateway
No cost intercompany calls
Massive reduction in cost of lines for the T&A system and an improved solution
Audio & Video Conferencing reduce travel costs

Resilience:

The back up plans in place enables ISS to divert lines very quickly when necessary
Automatic fail over of phones between sites
NGNs for DDI numbers & fax to email enables calls to be repointed immediately & individually
Mitel Teleworker for Home Working provides another level of resilience

Scalable:

New sites can be set up very quickly and licenses and phones deployed within days.

Efficiency:

Call sites are on a centralised infrastructure so that there is very simple communication between all departments and companies regardless of their geographic locations.

Ease of management:

The Mitel system enables system changes from one central point and a single point of contact with Britannic for all issues regarding system, lines and calls.

"Britannic have been an excellent parent in delivering the ISS telephony system across the UK. The platform has allowed us to extend the core system beyond our Woking and London operation to Livingstone, Wetherby, Kettering, Waltham Cross, Bolton and Birmingham, with minimal investment and zero disruption to the business operation. The further expansion to Video Conferencing was managed very professionally by Britannic and now gives us a single click solution to conferencing from meeting rooms and the desk top. Britannic are now an embedded partner to our business operation and continue to offer us professional support and innovative options to our business needs."

- Mark Brown, IT Director ISS