Logicalis

Commercial Property Giants DTZ Installs Arc Software for New Central Switchboard

The Client

DTZ is a key player in the world of commercial real estate, with over 12,500 people operating in 45 countries across the globe. As one of the major full service commercial property advisers, with a strong market presence, DTZ always looks for ways to enhance its company infrastructure and thereby its service to clients.

In July 2007, DTZ announced the acquisition of Donaldsons, a European-wide commercial property adviser. Donaldsons has now been fully integrated into DTZ, bolstering its retail, valuation and property management businesses in particular.

Profile

The acquisition of Donaldsons created new business opportunities for DTZ, but it also compounded an existing IT issue: DTZ already used two different telephone systems, one Cisco and one Mitel, and the integration with Donaldsons added another Cisco platform. Each system was isolated from the other by general incompatibilities and a lack of unification across the many locations. To complicate issues further, DTZ now also had three different groups of operators for answering and transferring calls, each using different systems. This arrangement was not ideal and added unnecessary complexity to the task of supporting DTZ's infrastructure.

The Challenge

In April 2008 DTZ announced the consolidation of its Central London Estate including the move from its Mayfair head office to a new HQ at 125 Old Broad Street, the former stock exchange building in the heart of the City of London.

This reorganisation, along with the acquisition of Donaldsons 12 months earlier, led DTZ to consider its options regarding its existing telecoms and information infrastructures. The objective was to combine the existing systems into one unified communications network.

The Solution

To achieve its objective, DTZ partnered with Logicalis, a leading provider of integrated ICT solutions. Logicalis were chosen due to their experience in the delivery of secure, converged computing and communications infrastructure and services.

DTZ's disparate multi-vendor telecoms infrastructure needed to be brought together and centralised. The new single entity would standardise internal and external communications, while also allowing straightforward future modifications, expansions and maintenance. The scheme would also take into account the changeability of economic and market conditions, and designed to accommodate changing business strategies.

As Kevin Stanzl, pre-sales consultant at Logicalis, says: “The project is on-going, as our solution was created to be flexible. All components involved in the project are adaptable and upgradeable in some manner.”

DTZ's Cisco telephony system had previously used Arc Solutions' Enterprise attendant console software, and had found it to provide the optimal combination of functionality, ease-of-use and corporate-class reliability. Such was their appreciation of Arc's benefit to their daily operations, DTZ stipulated that the chosen solution would be Cisco Unified Communications Manager v 6.1, with Arc Enterprise providing operator functionality across the business.

Ed Mitchell, Technical Architect at DTZ says: “Our Warwick Street office, in the West End, acts as the main switchboard for DTZ's London offices and also acts as an out-of-hours switchboard for all other mainland UK offices. It's obviously important that we choose a product that is both reliable and popular with the switchboard operators themselves.”

Kelly Mole is the London Switchboard Supervisor, overseeing a team of 10 at DTZ's main switchboard in its Warwick Street office. Kelly has experience of numerous switchboard operator consoles and finds Arc Enterprise to be the most fully-featured and adaptable console product available: “Arc displays all the relevant information we need on screen, and combines this clear presentation with a simple and intuitive user interface. We have a number of employees here who have extensive experience on a range of similar operator consoles, but the clear winner for them is Arc Enterprise.”

Arc Enterprise is responsible for distributing all calls that come into DTZ's main London switchboard, and the information displayed by Enterprise is crucial in allowing the operator to identify the correct employee needed for connection.

Kelly continues: “Arc is particularly versatile when we need to locate individuals and the caller has only partial information about the person they need to talk to, such as a first name and office location.”

In addition to Arc Enterprise with Cisco Unified Communications Manager v6.1, DTZ's existing telephony system was expanded with 700 additional Cisco 7965 IP telephone handsets with colour displays.

The Outcome

An excellent first impression is fundamental when customers first contact a business. Arc Enterprise doesn't just perform as expected, but actively improves DTZ's customer service levels.

Arc Enterprise also has a reputation for being easy to use and easy to learn, a fact reflected by the single three hour training session required for its new users at DTZ. Kelly Mole explains: “We found Arc intuitive and simple to use, which is excellent when considering some of the advanced functions that are included with this software. Keyboard short-cuts are easy to remember and all information is readily available. It makes our job far easier and quicker – the last thing anyone wants is to keep a caller waiting due to technical issues.”

According to Kevin Stanzl, of Logicalis: “The true measure of any telecoms system is the customer's awareness of the technology. We all rightfully expect telecommunications systems to simply work and take them for granted, so any problem – however innocuous – will be taken as a sign of an overall fault and perhaps the general unsuitability of the whole solution. With our system, and with the Arc component, we have a system that provides the functionality, power and high level of service that leading organisations demand.”

Alex Black, CTO of Arc Solutions, outlines the expectations a client has of any IP telephony system, and why organisations like DTZ need the very best solution and the most reliable package: “Customers, employees and managers within an organisation all have specific business requirements. Arc provides a complete solution to meet and exceed these needs in order to capitalise efficiency and yield an overall return on investment.”

Arc Solutions understands the requirements of large corporations as well as those of the end-user operators, as Alex Black says: “Arc Enterprise provides the powerful features operators need to quickly and easily navigate vital business information to ensure customers receive the best service available.”

Kelly Mole agrees with Alex's remarks: “Arc Enterprise allows us to do everything we need to do on a daily basis. It has all the features we need, and gives us full confidence that it will take us through into the future.”

For more information, please visit http://www.arcsolutions.com/.

About Arc Solutions

Arc Solutions works with a select network of Cisco partners to help deliver best of breed applications that complement Cisco IP telephony solutions. It currently has offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia . With its in-house research and development, training and support capabilities, the Arc proposition is unrivaled within the Cisco voice applications market. For more information please call +44 118 943 9200 or e-mail info@arcsolutions.com

Arc Solutions is a Mettoni Group Company.

About The Mettoni Group

Mettoni is a group of vendor aligned businesses that provide software and services designed to improve an organization's communications. Mettoni develop solutions that improve customer service, integrate personnel information and enable organizations to better manage their internal and external communications. These include call handling solutions, directory integration, telephone screen applications and communication management tools.

About DTZ

DTZ is a leading global real estate adviser with over 12,500 staff operating under the DTZ brand across 162 cities in 45 countries providing solutions for clients around the world. Its client-focused activities range from high quality capital market solutions, to cutting-edge occupier-led property services and advice. The comprehensive service offering across Europe , Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific and a presence in The Americas is based upon detailed local knowledge backed by first-class research. With its full-service expertise spanning all real estate sectors, DTZ offers a global solution to meet each client's particular property-related investment and business needs. The parent company, DTZ Holdings plc, has been quoted on the London Stock Exchange since 1987. http://www.dtz.com/