Find out more
For more information and on our services and pricing please complete this form.
HSJ Accountants.
Industry: Professional Services.
Introduction
Established in 2003, HSJ Accountants ('HSJ') is a full service accountancy practice that provides high quality private and professional accountancy services within the South Wales region. Founded by accountants Robyn Hughes and Kim Jackson, HSJ employs 14 staff at its brand new offices in Tredegar Park, Newport.
The challenges
From conception, HSJ enjoyed considerable growth, and after just 18 months had already outgrown their offices. The new site at Celtic Springs would provide them with room to grow and reflect the right image of a modern forward-looking accountancy practice. The move also provided HSJ with the opportunity to review their future telephony requirements. Moving to a green-field site was the perfect opportunity to implement a new technology solution, both for data and voice, that would best meet the needs of the business, today and in the future. This was different to most situations where you often have to mould your business to fit with the limitations of an incumbent system.
HSJ had a number of specific challenges that it wanted to solve with the new telephone system including:
- Mobility - with new offices there was uncertainty over which staff would go into which office, therefore they wanted the facility to move staff around quickly without having to perform complicated configurations or involve the expense and inconvenience of calling out an external engineer
- Greater call transparency - Needed to itemise individual client calls for accurate re-charging of time and expenditure
- Support additional revenue streams - The company wanted to maximise investment of its new office space and take advantage of spare capacity by offering serviced office facilities for small, local companies. The new communications system needed to enable a centralised reception facility to take and transfer calls for all the different businesses
- Support diversification of business services - HSJ also wanted to establish a new financial services business, therefore they required a system with the ability to record all calls to meet the latest FSA (Financial Services Association) guidelines
- Future-proofed system - The company wanted a telephony system that would meet its requirements now and in the future, without having to replace it again
The solution
In order to meet these challenges HSJ undertook a thorough investigation of the marketplace to determine which solution best met the needs of the business. There are a number of manufacturers claiming to offer IP telephony, but under closer scrutiny most of these only offer IP as an add-on to an existing TDM system - as far as HSJ were concerned this was no solution at all. Spokesperson, Kay Hussey said "What impressed us about the Swyx offering was that it was a 'pure' IP system and therefore completely independent of any legacy hardware or infrastructure".
HSJ was introduced to their local Swyx reseller, Atia Solutions based in Hengoed and a demonstration of the Swyx system was arranged. Kay Hussey continues "All of us at HSJ were immediately impressed by the functionality of Swyx and the technical expertise of Atia. Not only did the Swyx solution meet with our exact specification, but the people from Atia also demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of the product and of IP Telephony in general. This gave us a great deal of confidence not only in the product, but also in the capabilities of Atia to support the system in the future."
Following a series of initial pilots, the system was installed into HSJ's new offices in June 2005.
The results
Once the system had been successfully installed, the next step was to familiarise HSJ's staff with the new 'Swyx soft-phone' technology. Kay Hussey explains, "Accountancy practices can by nature be quite conservative, and this is especially true when it comes to technology. However, once we all realised how simple and convenient it was, and that we could click on any of our contact database numbers and be automatically connected, we were soon won over by the extended functionality and ease-of-use."
Now, it is possible for staff to log on to any PC and make or receive a call, providing complete mobility. When new staff join, then it is simply a case of assigning a new user ID.
Kay Hussey comments, "Using Swyx we can allocate a separate number to each individual business operation. When a call is received, the number and the company that it is for is displayed on-screen so the receptionist can answer it with the appropriate company greeting. The call can then be transferred to the correct extension with a couple of mouse clicks."
According to HSJ, the key advantage is the flexibility the system has provided them in setting up their serviced office facility.
Kay Hussey continues, "Since moving into the new facility we have rapidly started to fill our excess office space with new tenants. With Swyx it has been straightforward to set up their telephone requirements and provide them with a separate, but centralised number with discrete billing. We simply would not have been able to do this with a conventional system".
There are other bottom-line benefits too. Using Swyx's call logging details, HSJ can accurately re-charge clients for phone charges. This has a two-fold effect - it has increased the amount of re-charges and, because each client is separately logged, the number of queries on their bills have been reduced therefore ensuring improved client relationships.
The future
HSJ recognised from an early stage the benefits that VoIP could bring to their business and identified a 'pure' IP PBX system as the only solution that could meet their on-going business requirements. Kay Hussey concludes "We have a growing business that has to meet the needs of our rapidly developing client base. We needed a telephone system that could satisfy those needs today, whilst providing us with the on-going benefits of VoIP that we can adopt for future business demands. The system from Swyx met all of these objectives".