Data storage specialist Iron Mountain expects to save £80,000
a year from lower travel and communications costs after installing
a £200,000 IP telephone system from Telinet.
The converged system runs across Iron Mountain's European sites
and will encourage greater collaboration across the business,
improve customer service and ensure business continuity, said the
firm.
More than 120,000 clients in North America, Europe, Latin
America and Asia Pacific use Iron Mountain for archival records
management, data protection and information destruction. The
company
recently
signed its first customer, IT security company Integralis, to
its cloud-based storage service.
Iron Mountain conducts most of its 24/7 operations and customer
services on the phone. Mark Smith, head of European purchasing at
Iron Mountain, said a series of acquisitions had left the company
with disparate systems, many of which were nearing the end of their
life, had little functionality and were difficult for the IT team
to manage remotely.
"We now operate from a single platform, so we can flex and scale
telephony according to each office's specific needs and accommodate
future business growth," Smith said.
The IP system is integrated with desktop applications and a
central directory so that employees can share contacts and access
key data from other offices.
It will also let Iron Mountain host and manage voice conference
calls itself. Last year it paid an outsourced supplier £120,000 to
host conference calls. The new system will cut that bill by
£80,000, said Smith.
The system also logs and records calls and uses automated
switch-over in case of failure. Call-routing means customers can
always able to reach someone with the relevant expertise, and
softphone tools let staff make calls from their laptops.
Smith said the presence application allowed employees to
initiate, receive and conduct communications, when, where and via
the most appropriate device.