December 14, 2020

LIFT Financial – Case Study

Challenge

LIFT-Financial Group is an award-winning financial advice firm with a team of Chartered financial planners, mortgage brokers, and insurance experts who help thousands of clients across the UK. They have offices in Altrincham, London & Edinburgh.

Renowned for professional standards and technical ability, the Group is well known as an innovative, highly qualified, and respected team of specialists who provide bespoke advice to a diverse range of clients. This, coupled with an outstanding reputation for levels of service, means they have retained their clients for many years and have continued to acquire new clients throughout lockdown.

We had two outdated Toshiba digital PBX at Altrincham and London and another Toshiba in Edinburgh. The three Toshiba systems were linked together, however, the Edinburgh office was unable to link properly due to licensing. We could hold and transfer calls between Altrincham and London, not Edinburgh. We could also make internal calls between Altrincham and London but again not with the Edinburgh office.

This caused issues where a customer would dial into either London or Altrincham and required our team in Edinburgh. We would then have to give them the Edinburgh number to re-dial.
Also, staff could communicate internally between Altrincham and London but not Edinburgh; this meant that anybody speaking with Edinburgh from our other offices would make an external call and be charged, resulting in unnecessary monthly costs for communications with Edinburgh.

Finally, the Altrincham office Toshiba PBX was full and had no room for growth, coupled with the fact that the Toshiba product was discontinued, this meant we could not add more users or licenses.

Solution

We were able to manipulate cloud VOIP licensing for an internal system spread over three sites. It meant that all three sites were linked, so we had full internal communication to any extension at any location.

It also meant we could hold and transfer calls between any site and direct customers where necessary without them having to re-dial. It gave us full redundancy and disaster recovery, should we need to re-route incoming calls to one site. We also took advantage of the fixed costs of VOIP with unlimited calls, allowing for much better budgeting.

With the new set-up, we also utilised the UC desktop software. This gave each user visibility and presence of all other users across the sites, and quick and easy click to dial operation.

Outcome

Everything was planned to perfection, from the initial sales advice down to the number of ports; the service was professional and smooth. The changeover days we agreed were met, and the on-site engineers were very professional, knowledgeable, and extremely helpful. Our appointed Senior Engineer, Mark, was excellent and made sure that the transition was seamless from start to finish. We had one slight hardware issue, but this was replaced immediately without delay or fuss.

POST-INSTALL HOW DO YOU FEEL TELESIS (Now Firstcom Europe) HAS HELPED THE BEDDING-IN PERIOD AND AFTERCARE?

“The staff at Telesis (Now Firstcom Europe) always respond to any questions asked and are always really helpful. Mark is still allocated as our Senior Electrician, and again, no question goes unanswered or problem unsolved.”

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