Benefits of converged telephony rings true for JCP Solicitors

Profile

In little more than 25 years, law firm JCP Solicitors has grown from a single office in Swansea to being recognised as one of the top 100 companies in South West Wales.

It became a limited company in 2015 and currently has 24 Directors, with approximately 160 staff spread across the firm’s offices in Swansea, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Haverfordwest, and Fishguard.

JCP offers a wide range of legal services for individuals and businesses of all sizes, locally and nationally. It specialises in the agriculture and healthcare sectors, whilst developing its expertise into niche areas like professional negligence and catastrophic brain injury.

Merge and grow

Entrepreneurial in its approach, JCP has undertaken a number of mergers with smaller regional law firms in recent years, to ensure the growth planned by CEO Hayley Davies and the senior management team was realised.

Implementation of the growth strategy would require technology to play an increasingly important role if the business is to continue delivering the high quality legal services for which it is renowned.

JCP identifies a merger target, with the intention of closing the deal within 3 months and then integrating them into the business within 8-10 weeks.

To maintain a collaborative and consistent service to their clients, all users should be sharing the same IT network, infrastructure and phone system within that time.

Quiss has supported JCP since 2008 and our ability to complete the implementation challenge set by the firm’s senior management team ensured they recently signed an extended support agreement.

Out with the old

Following the initial installation of new infrastructure and equipment as part of our Qworks managed services contract, the phone system was identified as an area where resilience, convenience and connectivity could be improved, whilst cutting costs.

Each of the then six offices, had individual phone lines, different phone systems and their own receptionists charged with answering calls.

Our first recommendation was the removal of all the old phone systems and the installation of new data circuits to all offices. This allowed internet and voices services, as well as ensuring a more centralised robust connection to the servers in the firm’s Swansea HQ.

Quiss advised that the new system gave us the flexibility and security we need, combined with the scalability we will need in the future – cutting our call costs was an added bonus.Hayley Davies, Chief Executive Office, JCP Solicitors

In with the new

Into each of the offices we installed an Avaya Office IP500 telephone system, a hybrid PBX with legacy digital technology at its core, but VoIP and SIP support added.

This powerful unified collaboration solution allows JCP to designate a centralised receptionist to deal with all incoming calls to the different offices, regardless of which number a caller has dialled. This introduces a new level of consistency to how calls are dealt with and minimises the disruption to reception staff at the different locations.

If for any reason the designated receptionist is unable to answer, calls can be picked up by the next registered receptionist in the list, reducing the risk of someone answering who is not focussed on the role.

Colleagues at different locations can speak to each other or transfer calls simply by dialling the extension number, rather than having to use the full phone number of the office. Calls between the firm’s different offices are made over the local area network and are therefore free of charge, encouraging closer collaboration through transparent operation.

Qvoice also provides the external phone lines and through careful negotiation we have manged to reduce JCP’s call charges to approximately half of what was paid by consolidating several providers services into a single negotiated agreement.

A major benefit for a business like JCP that expects to grow, is the scalability of the Quiss solution, which can expand to cope with up to 3,000 users at a single site or up to 150 different locations.

By continued close monitoring of the data circuits, we are able to manage the organisations data traffic capacity to ensure continued connectivity at all times which is a vital part of their operation. We are also able to predict potential increased capacity requirements to accommodate the growing workfoce.

We couldn’t put it better ourselves…

JCP Solicitors is a growing business with serious ambition that recognises the increasingly important role technology will play in their continuing success, as explained by CEO Hayley Davies: “From an early stage in the implementation of our new systems and infrastructure, we understood the phone system needed upgrading and Quiss were the right people to advise and guide us through the process.

“Communications reliability and quality can impact a business like ours and we need to keep up if we are to meet the demands of our clients in an increasingly competitive market.

“You need proven solutions from a trusted technology adviser that are simple, easy to deploy and easy to manage, whilst bringing colleagues and clients closer together. Our old system might have been ‘good enough’ in its day, but our growth strategy dictates that ‘good enough’ won’t do anymore.

“Quiss advised that the new system gave us the flexibility and security we need, combined with the scalability we will need in the future – cutting our call costs was an added bonus.”