In 2002 Ayudar were approached to advise a large company based in multiple buildings on a single site in the South of England on a way to minimise the effect on business of any failure of telephone lines or equipment, the telephone being mission critical to the company.

The existing phone system had failed on two occasions in recent months causing considerable disruption to the business.

Analysis showed that the most critical point of failure was the centralized BT Meridian telephone system. A failure of the PABX would reduce telephone traffic to and from the site to virtually zero.

The solution proposed was to replace the Meridian system with three Alcatel 4400 systems located in separate buildings but networked together. Telephone lines were brought in on separate routes from two different BT telephone exchanges. This meant that a single point of failure would result at worst in only a one-third reduction in voice capacity. Furthermore by linking the systems with VoIP over the existing data network (fiber backbone) savings of over £400k p.a. were achieved by eliminating extensive BT onsite cabling.

Ayudar assisted the customer in the selection of suitable supplier and project managed the installation, testing and commissioning of the system.

As a follow up Ayudar then helped the customer reduce telecommunications costs by:

Migrating BT data circuits onto an alternative supplier. There was no logistical change in the operation, just a reduction in rental charges billed through another supplier.

Setting up Mobile Extensions - by making a direct link from the mobile phone supplier (O2) to the customer’s telephone system all calls to and from O2 mobiles benefited from a considerable reduction in call charges.

Miscellaneous tidy up - by ensuring that there were no redundant lines and that all lines on site were using the correct service provider on negotiated contracted rates, further savings were made.

The overall savings from this exercise were in excess of £500,000 p.a. and have enabled the new telephone systems to be purchased and installed out of the cost savings made.