Bracey’s Accountants is an independent firm of qualified accountants and tax specialists servicing businesses and individuals across the South East of England. As the result of fast-paced sustained growth, the company required larger premises to support the increasing number of staff. The new 5,000 sq ft premises would also accommodate serviced offices for another 12 businesses.
The challenge
The relocation required a seamless IT and telephony move to limit the risk for the organisation and potential impact on customers. The project required foresight and key planning to ensure all works could be completed within extremely tight deadlines due to the urgency to move premises.
Konnetix also needed to deliver services that would be robust and, where possible, future-proof to ensure the serviced offices and Bracey’s team would get the most from the IT investment.
The solution
The current infrastructure was assessed and tested to make sure CAT5e passed the fluke test, and was suitable for voice and data connectivity. The data network for computers and phones was split between two floors and two data cabinets – this was consolidated into one data and server cabinet for ease of management and reduced maintenance costs.
To limit downtime and disruption to the business’ day-to-day communications, four temporary ADSL lines were installed, whilst awaiting installation of a new 100Mbps lease line. A leased line is appropriate for businesses that require the transfer of large files and need a dedicated high bandwidth solution. As the serviced offices’ tenants could be from a variety of industries, this option guarantees fast and stable connectivity, in addition to supporting the new telephony integration.
The telephony system was moved to a hosted platform along with their email and Office suite to Microsoft O365 with hosted exchange, delivering increased flexibility, mobility and efficiency all round. When it comes to internet telephony it does more than just lower costs; it helps users to integrate software programs, such as e-mail, e-fax and remote conferencing. As Bracey’s is a fast-growing practice, this solution also enabled staff to work and answer calls from multiple locations. Utilising VoIP Bracey’s managed to retain their existing numbers, further limiting any client disruption.
To deliver added value for the serviced offices, Konnetix installed additional IT hardware for routing and switching to allow tenants to have internet and telephone access via the same infrastructure whilst maintaining independence and security.
Disaster recovery methods were put into place at the new premises including the provision of adequate power and backup solutions in the event of a power failure. In addition to the installation of the lease line a backup circuit was installed to provide failover in the unlikely event the primary circuit becomes unavailable through failure or scheduled down time.
Out of hours work was scheduled for the relocation of the servers and IT hardware. This was to ensure that all staff would be able to arrive on Monday morning and start work in their new offices in the same way as they finished on the Friday evening, in doing so all servers, computers, laptops and tablets were installed onto the new network and configured to work with the newly tested services.
The results
The relationship between Bracey’s Accountants and Konnetix has delivered great benefits to the new premises and added significant value to the serviced offices.
Peter Bracey, managing director at Bracey’s Accountants, said: “There were significant challenges of moving our entire firm to a new location, limiting down time for staff, integrating with our Cambridge office and ensuring there was no disruption felt by our clients. The approach taken by Konnetix ticked all the boxes, no down time and the service received by our clients was not affected. Darren and the team at Konnetix should be extremely proud to have delivered exactly what they said they would – on time and on budget.”
For more information about internet telephony solutions at Konnetix, click here.