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Rowley-Ashworth
Founded in 1829 in Manchester, Rowley-Ashworth is one of the UK's most established and respected legal practices. The company has strong historical roots with the trade union movement, assisting its members with personal injury claims, and other legal issues. The company has expanded rapidly over the last 10 years and now employs over 250 people from its 8 offices located in the principal UK cities.
The Challenge – Expensive moves and changes, out-dated system, no ability to
introduce new integrated functionality |
The company has recently gone through a period of growth and expansion, and as part of that process it needed to replace an aging TDM telephony system that lacked the capacity to meet the needs of the business and was very expensive to support. Harvey Chalal, IT manager at Rowley-Ashworth explains the problems, "The company has always prided itself on being at the leading edge of its profession and has not been shy of embracing new procedures, technology and processes if it believed these would make it a more proactive and efficient practice. Our old telephone system, however was holding us back, not only was it very limited in terms of the features that it offered, it was very expensive to maintain and support. Each time we wanted to add a new employee or move an existing employee to another location it was a major exercise in manpower and financial expense."
He continues, "The TDM system also stood completely on its own, as parts of our integration plans we wanted the telephone system to interact directly with our case management application. This was impossible with the existing installation."
Another issue for Rowley was centralising the receptionists to the principal offices, therefore freeing up the smaller offices from unnecessary administration and allowing the company to distribute its resources more effectively. This was a function that the original incumbent system could not perform.
| The Solution – A "pure" IP PBX from Swyx |
The company spent some time researching the market and had quickly come to the conclusion that a "pure" IP PBX was the only solution that he would consider to satisfy the company’s existing and future telephony requirements. Chalal comments on the selection decision, " The solution had to be IP due to our Wide Area Network requirements and our aggressive expansion plans, we initially looked at Cisco, this was certainly the safer option, but quite frankly in comparison Swyx it did not stack up. OneSource, our local Swyx reseller, invited us to a very busy call centre that was exclusively using the Swyx technology. This was a tough environment for any phone system and the Swyx handled it perfectly."
He continues, "We then did a cost comparison for a trail installation, an expansion onto a new floor of our Birmingham office. The cost of the additional board and phones from our existing supplier was more expensive for the one floor, than the complete Swyx system for the whole Birmingham office. The decision was made to install Swyx on this floor and monitor the results."
The trial installation was a success and the Company decided to implement the system throughout the Birmingham office and then roll out it out to the other seven offices.
Chalal describes the roll-out process, "We developed an implementation plan for each office with our partner OneSource, it was decided that, rather than run the old and new systems together in parallel, we would make a clean changeover at each office. All the moves were conducted over a weekend, we shut down the TDM system on the Friday, together with our partner we installed the Swyx system on the Saturday, and we went live on the Monday. The staff were asked to arrive early on the Monday morning for an induction training session and after that we were alive and working."
In the two years since the Birmingham office was installed, Rowley-Ashworth has now installed the Swyx system in most of its regional offices with Cardiff and a second London office being added next year.
| The Results – Huge savings in telephony operating costs, enhanced functionality, and a system that will grow and evolve with the business |
Since installing Swyx, Rowley-Ashworth has enjoyed a major improvement in it office efficiency and made major cost savings; Chalal reviews the results so far, "First and foremost, the acceptance by all the staff was very good, even Senior lawyers that were used to using the old type phones quickly embraced the new time saving features that the system brought them. It did not take long for them to recognise that using just a few mouse clicks enabled them to set-up conference calls, access client files and make calls directly from their contact list. A major leap forward from the technology they were used to."
He continues, "One of the biggest benefits that we have had from the system, and certainly the one that has saved us the most money is the ability to set-up conference calls from the desk-top without having to involve any thirdparty such as BT. A major part of the daily business for our solicitors is dealing with insurance companies, barristers and other legal representatives. Having the ability to initiate conference calls ourselves has saved us thousands of pounds."
"The other area in which our efficiency and costs have improved is in the overall support of the telephony network. In the past every time a new employee started or a solicitor moved around the organisation a significant amount of manpower was required to initiate this change. Now it is all carried our automatically by the system. A solicitor can work from any of our offices without any reconfiguration or cabling, as soon as they log-in the receptionist know they are "in" and can transfer calls to them on the same extension regardless of their location. The other advantage of the system is that we can make more of our professionals available more often, by allowing them to pick-up calls dependent on the call type. We have two principle parts to our business, personal injury and employment law, we can now distribute these calls across the entire organisation dependent on who is available at the time."
| The Future – More offices, more applications |
Once the roll-out to all offices is complete the next major project for the company is to integrate the Swyx system with their Pilgrim case management system. Chalal explains, "Another reason for selecting Swyx was the open nature of its software structure. The Swyx architecture would allow us, without the need for any further software development, to integrate the telephone system into our existing case management system. Our staff would then be able to access the history of every case simply by entering a client code into the telephone handset or by the using the caller’s line identity number. Every piece of information required to process a call would then be available at their finger-tips without the need to access files or to spend time accessing the computer."
Chalal sums up his experience of using the new solution, "The real beauty of the Swyx is that I can treat it in the same way as any other application that runs on our network. I do not need an additional hardware or cabling infrastructure, or a third-party support contract and, unlike our previous TDM system, it will evolve and grow as our business grows."
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