Hays has been a Redcentric customer since 2008, and during this time, it has developed a close working relationship with the Redcentric team, so that both teams understand Hays’ objectives and work in close partnership to achieve them. Telephony is critical to the success of Hays’ recruitment service, with dedicated geographic business numbers channelling inbound enquiries to the right areas of the business across the UK. Hays had already invested in managed LAN, WAN and fixed telephony services (SIP) which acted as a springboard for the addition of Redcentric’s other hosted telephony services, that replaced the legacy on-premises office telephony systems across 100 offices and over 2000 end users.
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hays needed to quickly support all staff to be able to work from home efficiently. Hays’ offices were using Redcentric’s hosted telephony platform with SIP trunks to deliver calls to on-premises PBXs. This provided greater flexibility with numbers based in the cloud and Hays valued the enhanced quality of service and support which Redcentric was able to deliver.
Hays also had recently deployed Microsoft Teams to support collaboration amongst teams for staff. Internal feedback received about Microsoft Teams was that employees liked it because it was easy to use and worked seamlessly with other business applications.
Working closely with the Redcentric team, we've done three to four voice migrations within the last nine months in the time it would usually take us to do just one.
Over a nine-month period since the start of Covid pandemic, Redcentric continuously worked with Hays to achieve the flexibility needed. Initially this was to remove the dependency on on-premises PBXs; then subsequently to enable its users to make and receive PSTN calls on any Teams enabled device. This was achieved by leveraging both Hays’ investment in Microsoft Teams and taking the enterprise telephony features from Redcentric’s core telephony platform, Unity.
Graham Loveless, Head of Networks at Hays, said, “Working closely with the Redcentric team, we’ve done three to four voice migrations within the last nine months in the time it would usually take us to do just one.”
Standard diverts – initially Unity was used to divert calls to mobiles and other interim softphone solutions to enable approximately 300 call handlers to distribute calls to the right people.
Softphone telephony – diverts for call handling groups were then replaced by softphones to relieve pressure and this enabled 2,000 licenced users to make and receive calls on any device.
Call2Teams – during the Covid pandemic a pilot of 20 users, using Call2Teams to integrate Unity into Teams, was carried out. This went very well and a rollout of the service to 2,000 users in Hays’ 30 largest offices was completed in three months by the beginning of December 2020, keeping to the agreed schedule.
Additional users – the success of the Call2Teams deployment has led to a further 400 users across smaller offices being added to the Teams migration schedule. Phase 2 of the Call2Teams rollout will be completed by end of March 2021.
Akixi reporting gives visibility to the office administrators and managers, enabling them to see who is available to take phone calls, and to have some control over when staff should take calls and to help them to monitor call answer rates while staff are working from home.
Call recording was also quickly deployed for those staff normally based at Hays’ service centre in New Malden, which supports finance operations and service delivery for Hays’ customers.
Graham Loveless, Head of Networks at Hays said,
Call2Teams played a significant role in helping Hays staff continue to be able to work efficiently throughout Covid.
One of the biggest benefits I have from working with Redcentric is their agility and flexibility. Companies that are nimble like Redcentric are able to support their customers so much better.
Business continuity – “Call2Teams played a significant role in helping Hays staff continue to be able to work efficiently throughout Covid.”
Agility – “Since the start of Covid, we have used Redcentric’s telephony platform with Call2Teams to support remote working and this has helped us to stay agile and move quickly to support our customers.”
Flexible support – “One of the biggest benefits I have from working with Redcentric is their agility and flexibility. Companies that are nimble like Redcentric are able to support their customers so much better.”
Hays now has the flexibility to easily scale its hosted telephony services up or down and can enable employees to work from any location on any modern portable device.
Redcentric continues to work closely with Hays, advising on new capabilities, which can be leveraged using its telephony platform.
As part of Hays’ cloud strategy, future network investment will include a move to the internet connected office, with the aim of creating an estate of ‘trusted devices’ that can access Hays’ corporate facilities with improved security and further agility.
