With a change in office location and plans to modernise its working model, Believe Housing chose Exactive’s CloudUCX solution to deliver Microsoft Teams with telephony which allowed the housing provider to get up and running quickly and effectively.
Believe Housing was planning to move office location but it had a traditional desk-based telephony system which it couldn’t take with them. Users had one desk, one phone and almost everyone returned to the same desk each day. In essence, it worked for them in a way, but Believe Housing knew that it was rather limiting in many ways for a modern business.
Graeme Clark, IT service delivery manager, Believe Housing, said, “We certainly knew that we could be doing more to facilitate the direction that the organisation wanted to go in. Our people cover a huge area of nearly 900 square miles, so it’s important that they’re out and about as much as possible.
“We knew that switching from desk-based telephony to something much more suited to working in an agile way had the potential to transform the way our people worked.”
Believe Housing began looking at Microsoft Teams as part of a review of its office portfolio. The housing provider completed a small trial in its ICT team first; by the time the plans for its new offices were confirmed, Believe Housing was confident that Teams was the right choice.
Exactive, a company owned by Gamma and itself a Microsoft Gold Partner, was recommended to Believe Housing by its Microsoft reseller as being one of the leading telephony partners for Teams. Clark said, “Finding the right partner to work with and then running an early trial were the biggest plus-points of the project for me. The process fitted together well, with our roll-out of Office 365 and the agile ways of working we wanted to achieve.”
Teams made the changes to Believe Housing’s offices possible and its staff can now work from anywhere. Clark said, “The pandemic has demonstrated that we made the right choice. When we needed to let our staff work from home due to coronavirus, we could do so easily.”
“For any business considering Teams telephony, go for it. You might think it’s an overwhelming change, but it was surprising how well our staff adapted to it and how well they responded.”
