Background
Optima Systems (Optima) are a leading international glass partitioning manufacturer with over 30 years’ experience in providing beautifully crafted, glazed partitioning systems and doors.
Since 1986, Optima have grown not only by designing, manufacturing, installing, and testing their own products in the UK but also globally, investing in manufacturing facilities and in their people.
Drivers for Change
Optima’s main objective has always been to have good visibility of all their IT infrastructure in a well-managed, innovative and cost-effective way.
Their aim was to regain internal resource time by building up partner relationships and relinquishing the management of infrastructure and telephony platforms.
Optima started this process about 10 years ago, finding a suitable partner to migrate their on-premise equipment. However, after a while Optima became dissatisfied with the management of the infrastructure and mobile communications, deciding the time was right to test the market. They identified a new infrastructure partner, upgraded their network and relocated to a data centre. Optima were not yet in a position to move to the cloud and spent the best part of a year embedding the new infrastructure network.
Voice Strategy
The last piece of the puzzle was to upgrade and outsource their voice contracts.
Optima had a hosted Mitel telephony system, also incorporating mobile phones. Optima first met with Onecom in early 2019, a cloud communications provider whom they had identified as providing innovative solutions using the latest cloud technology.
The start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 meant the telephony project was accelerated by the need for more staff to work from home but also fell in line with Optima’s business strategy, which was to achieve a single accountable, fully managed, enterprise voice service. It needed to span all user types, giving users the appropriate tools to be able to do their job and the ability to operate from anywhere, integrating with the Microsoft suite of applications.
Project Delivery
The voice and cloud proposition from Onecom was very compelling. Onecom and Optima have common customers in the Construction and Manufacturing sector, so it was easy for Optima to conduct their due diligence and verify that Onecom were a credible, experienced, and trustworthy partner.
The delivery schedule was tight and Onecom and Optima worked together to try and coincide the migration as closely as possible with the incumbent supplier’s end of contract timelines.
Onecom seamlessly migrated the existing Mitel partner service over to Mitel’s MiCloud Flex Service, interconnected into Onecom’s Cloud Managed Service Platform, OneCloud, which has native integration with leading contact centre platforms. The Connect4Teams solution brings the services together, allowing Optima to create a single service for unified communications and contact centre services utilising the existing Teams environment.
OneCloud enables Onecom customers to manage multiple vendors in one intuitive digital interface, allowing for a simple cost-effective consumption of services and access to new and innovative cloud and contact centre technologies. Connect4Teams would allow users to achieve the ‘best of both’, through Microsoft’s world-class collaboration tools and Mitel’s Enterprise Voice capabilities, under a single seamless user experience on a feature rich, user-friendly platform.
Onecom also incorporated all of Optima’s mobile services under OneCloud which included over 200 mobile endpoints being migrated over to the Vodafone network, delivering an overall single managed service across Optima’s communication services. Within OneCloud, change requests are quick and easy with immediate visibility of tracking. Additional functionality includes easy management of BARS, adding or removing bolt-ons at the click of a button, easy administration, and ordering new SIM cards or performing SIM swaps.
“In all my years’ experience, this was the most seamless voice migration we have undertaken. It was done in challenging circumstances with a tight schedule, in the middle of a pandemic. As a business we now have the resiliency and consistency of service required to continue business from any location.”
Multiple Benefits
The cloud technology has enabled all staff to communicate and collaborate on a global scale, whether it’s an installation team fitting a glass partition in a London office or a factory worker in Malaysia. Every single one of Optima’s employees are connected under a single connected enterprise service globally.
Technology offers so much flexibility with different modes of communication, helping Optima to promote better community and more engagement, whilst being device agnostic. Onecom cloud solutions embrace this ethos: it doesn’t matter where you are or what device you’re on, you can take or make calls from anywhere in the world.
“Technology which can provide real-time communication and collaboration has swiftly moved upwards in the hierarchy of needs. Users can consume the tools they require to do their job, from any location. This is the first phase of Optima’s digital evolution and we look forward to helping them create a more connected customer experience as their strategic communication partner moving forward.”
With Onecom’s multinational footprint underpinning the ability to deliver a true follow-the-sun service model 24/7, the cloud communications provider can provide a proactive and real-time service to Optima across all global operating locations including Europe and Asia. This will deliver a highly responsive and seamless service for Optima, ensuring users can always communicate and collaborate, regardless of location.
Another area of significant improvement is Optima’s ability to analyse their inbound calling. Before working with Onecom, Optima would produce large data sets of information which they analysed at length to reactively decide what was best for the business. Now, they can rely on user experience and understand what groups work well together via rich analytical capabilities. Rather than overthinking or second-guessing the best way to set up hunt groups, they will let the system operate for three months, then analyse the data to see what is happening in the ‘real world’. This methodology will ultimately improve the customer experience and optimise operating efficiencies. Optima are also making significant costs savings with the new voice technology, including eliminating international call costs.
Onecom’s Connect4Teams technology can also support Optima’s sales and marketing campaigns. By allocating specific codes for individual campaigns, Optima can now easily track and measure their business analytics, to gauge which campaigns are the most successful and which need optimising.
Adapting
Optima was fortunate to have identified and adopted a more mobile, flexible way of working, pre-Covid, for their 500 employees (350 of whom are in the UK) and could use the time from March to September to further enhance their robustness and evolve their remote and hybrid strategies.
For Optima, the challenging global health crisis has not had too much negative impact on the ability for staff to continue working. They already predominantly had mobile roles within the construction industry pre-pandemic, plus Optima had already decided to move all the design teams away from large, under the desk workstations. By simply voice enabling Microsoft Teams through Onecom’s Connect4Teams enterprise voice solution, it has delivered ultimate flexibility to all staff, underpinned by a highly resilient and secure cloud service. All central service roles and back office staff are now location-independent and working efficiently.
Learn more about how Onecom have supported our customers through the COVID-19 pandemic in our ‘Business as Unusual’ mini-series of blogs here.
IT Adoption
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a new sense of urgency for remote working, accelerating flexibility in the workplace.
Optima deployed Microsoft Teams eighteen months ago and saw a 30% adoption rate. When most employees were forced into home-based working, there was a 100% adoption rate of Teams within two weeks as everyone became reliant on the platform in order to do their jobs properly. After three weeks, the user experience was overwhelmingly positive and cemented the decision to mobilise an enterprise voice rollout.
The Accounts department in particular adapted well and it accelerated their move to a paperless process. Estimators and designers also adjusted positively to home working through the use of Microsoft Team’s collaboration capabilities.
“Our relationship with Onecom is still relatively new. There were various unforeseen challenges that we imposed during the go live, but Onecom overcame them and we were impressed with their project methodologies, documentation and delivery. The team showed a dedicated understanding of how Optima operated which gave us confidence in the early days. We were looking for a long-term partnership and Onecom demonstrated particular strengths and importantly credibility within voice and cloud communications, so we instinctively knew they would be a great fit.”
Future Plans
Optima’s aim as they grow and increase their international business activities is to promote a joined-up community, across the UK and globally.
A forward-thinking business, Optima are already on the path to further innovation utilising new and innovative technologies in order to drive business improvements and have already started embracing cutting edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.
“Aligning the right technology is fundamental to supporting our customers strategic roadmap and further advancing the way they operate and serve their customers. Therefore, it’s crucial that our Cloud Managed Service Platform provides access to modern and innovative technology solutions, underpinned by our in-house team of digital transformation experts. This blend of technology and people allow us to ensure we deliver value to our customers and a provides a platform to innovate.”
Learn More
To understand how Onecom could help your business deliver simply brilliant customer experiences and provide operational agility, chat to us today.
In our art of the possible sessions, we’ll aim to get an understanding of how your business currently operates, what your objectives are, and where technology can make measurable differences.