Member Article

North East business lays the foundations of a global IP telephony system

Durham based business and IT consultants, Waterstons have helped J Barbour and Sons Ltd substantially reduce costs by implementing a state of the art communications solution which the company plans to roll out globally.

Phase one of the solution is now complete and has seen the leading country and casual clothing supplier’s three UK based offices move onto a Voice over IP (VOIP) telephone system which uses Barbour’s IT network rather than the public telephone network to route calls.

The new VOIP telephone system has enabled Barbour to standardise their telephone system, their handsets and their voicemail solution.

There is a single electronic telephone directory on each phone which holds numbers for staff on all three sites. Barbour can now make secure site to site calls over their existing wide area network (WAN) for no charge, substantially reducing costs.

The next stage will see the implementation of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Live Communications Server which will give Barbour’s mobile workforce access to email, calendars and information on their colleague’s whereabouts straight from their handheld mobile phones and PDAs. There are great efficiency savings to be made as staff will be able to instantly see whether their colleagues are available, on holiday, on the telephone or in a meeting at the touch of a button. It is possible to forward calls to your static telephones onto a mobile or other number so employees working from home or out of the office will be instantly contactable.

Brenda Readman-Bell, Barbour’s Finance Director said “Rolling out the communications system worldwide will result in significant cost and efficiency savings for Barbour, reducing international phone charges for calls between sites. The integration of the VOIP telephony solution with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Live Communications Server will help us improve efficiency as well as promoting collaboration amongst employees regardless of their location.”

Headquartered in South Shields, Barbour has a presence in 29 countries worldwide including Germany, Austria, France, the United States, Italy, Spain, Argentina and Japan.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .