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The CarbonNeutral Company is one of the world’s leading carbon offset and climate consulting organisations with thousands of clients and more than 150 emissions reduction projects worldwide.

Established in 1997, it employs about 40 people in its head offce in King’s Cross, London in addition to a feld-based salesforce. It currently has six overseas offces, each of which is staffed by a team of four to fve people. The CarbonNeutral Company has sophisticated communications needs, due to the global nature of its business and its commitment to minimise the carbon impact of its activities through initiatives such as remote and homeworking.

The CarbonNeutral Company’s ability to work in the most effcient and sustainable manner was being hampered by an outdated telephone system that was operating at maximum capacity and no longer able to meet the company’s increasingly complex call routing and messaging requirements.

In January, chief information offcer Joe Bai started looking for a replacement that would enable the company to meets its CSR obligations and give employees a fully integrated and cost-effective alternative to landlines and mobile phones for remote working with a unifed Inbox for voice and email messages.

“This project was all about meeting our needs as a global company. My goal was to build a phone system that would enable staff anywhere in the world to make and take calls just as if they were in the London offce,” he explained. “I also wanted to implement complex routing schemes, so that if a call was not being answered in sales it would ring in another department, with the ability to ‘follow the sun’ outside offce hours. If there was no one to pick up a call in the London offce, I wanted it to be routed to US East Coast, then theWest Coast and fnally, if necessary, to the Pacifc Rim, ensuring that phone calls to us always get answered.”

sustainabletimes 27 www.binfo.co.uk

The Solution

Samsung recommended a Samsung OffceServ 7000 IP phone system, which combines voice and data communications with the latest features, such as wireless handsets (DECT or WiFi), mobile extensions and remote working.

Bai was impressed not only by the system features and ease of installation, but also by the way in which Samsung’s system met The CarbonNeutral Company’s broader environmental obligations. “The Samsung OffceServ 7000 is such a well thought out package. This is the third or fourth brand of VoIP system I have implemented and Samsung’s is the most complete and integrated solution of them all,” he enthused.

“I run a very small IT staff so I don’t want to spend months training people in how to use the system. And with the OffceServ I didn’t have to. Implementation really was just a question of taking it out of the box and plugging it in. The system was installed in one day and the only thing users had to do was reset their voicemail box, otherwise they just carried on working as normal.”

Offce staff are even using the same handsets. Because the OffceServ 7000 is compatible with both IP and traditional handsets, The CarbonNeutral Company was able to keep the deskphones from its old system, saving money and maximising the use of existing resources.

Remote working

A key beneft of the new system is the IP extension capability that enables remote workers with an internet connection to appear as just another offce extension with access to exactly the same system features that they enjoy when in the offce.

Before, employees working remotely would communicate by mobile phone and landline, which was both costly and inconvenient for customers who would often have to dial several numbers before they were able to locate the person they wanted. Now with IP extension phones (and softphones on laptops), calls to the offce number can be transferred to remote workers without the caller even knowing – and without incurring additional call charges.

This is a feature common to all IP phone systems, including others looked at by Bai, but what impressed

him about Samsung’s offering was its simplicity.

“Samsung’s phones are very, very convenient. IP phones are pre-confgured centrally and then sent out to remote workers. All they need to do is plug the phone in to their broadband connection and it will automatically connect to the offce phone system,” he said.

Removing the need for technicians to set-up employees’ home offces refects Samsung’s commitment to reduce the footprint of its products, which, as Bai notes, extended right down to the economical, waste-free packaging.

“When the phone system came, it was boxed in just plain cardboard: there was no foam and no waste. All the packaging was 100% recyclable and went out with the weekly recycling collection,” he said.

The future

The Samsung OffceServ 7000 has only recently been installed but Bai is already thinking about how its features can be used to achieve even greater effciencies for The CarbonNeutral Company.

One aspect he is looking at is toll bypass to reduce the cost of international calls. The CarbonNeutral Company can make free internet calls to its offces around the world, but calls to and from international customers, suppliers and contacts attract charges. By installing a Samsung switch on the other side of the Atlantic and

networking it with the London system, Bai hopes to reduce these charges substantially. For example, a call to a customer in the US could be routed at no cost to the US switch where it would break out onto the PSTN incurring only local charges. As a business that advises customers on ways to reduce their carbon emissions, it is essential that The CarbonNeutral Company practises what it preaches. The Samsung OffceServ 7000 lets them do just this and improve effciency and customer service.

Home and away

The Samsung OffceServ 7000 is helping The CarbonNeutral Company adopt more sustainable working practices.

James Goulding reports

www.samsung.com

Joe Bai: This project was all about meeting our needs as a global company.