Lance Owen

Sector: Automotive

Key Feature: Multi-Site Networking

The Business Problem

Established in 1987 by Chairman & Managing Director Lance Owen, the business has grown from the original branch in Kingston upon Thames to now encompass seven showrooms inside the M25 to the South West of London, in addition to the West Byfleet based Group Parts & Service Centre. Holding the Vauxhall & Saab franchises for this corridor of the capital, Lance Owen has over 40,000 customers, employs over 200 staff, with an annual turnover in excess of £45M. During 2005 Lance Owen will sell more than 3,500 vehicles, deliver in excess of 75,000 hours of technicians' time and supply over £8.5M of Vauxhall & Saab spares.

Lance Owen was quick to see the possibilities offered by voice and data networking and invested in a Siemens HiCom 150 telephone system in the mid 90s. This allowed staff at the first four showrooms - Kingston, Richmond, Twickenham & Weybridge - to transfer calls between locations, without incurring BT call charges. Ten years on and the Group had doubled in size, expanding beyond the capabilities and capacity of the Siemens system. With a steady stream of new showrooms being added, all calls between the new locations and those to and from the first four were costing the business dearly - both in terms of the "real" money handed to BT in call costs and in staff efficiency. Over the same period, staff using the Group's back office IT applications had also gained first hand experience of the company's growing pains. The servers' running all front office, back office and email applications were located in the Group's Kingston Data Centre, with digital leased-line connectivity to the office PCs at each showroom and the Group Parts & Service Centre. The massive growth of email as a form of communication - to staff, suppliers and customers alike - and the very fact that emails were transported between Lance Owen sites over the same links as other transactional data, led to the response times of the in-house IT systems and applications getting slower and slower.

Searching For The Solution

It soon became clear to Lance Owen's Group Operations Director, Charles Stakowski that what initially started out as two business problems which rapidly needed fixing, could be solved with a single overall solution. "Having researched and calculated the cost of the various options available to us from a wide range of Service Providers, it became very obvious that a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between our eight locations was the best way forward for our business. Not only would this provide greater bandwidth to alleviate the network congestion caused by the increase in email traffic, it would also provide the foundation for passing telephone calls between sites "for free" using Voice over IP (VoIP)." Lance Owen chose BT's Metro VPN to satisfy their need to pass voice and data between their sites. With a 2 Mbps service to the four largest sites & 256 kbps to the other four showrooms, the ability of BT's offering to provide Quality of Service (QoS), ensuring telephone calls could be sent between sites "in Real Time," so preserving the integrity of speech, provided crucial in its choice.

Unearthing a British "Gem"

After selecting the underlying infrastructure, the focus then fell upon the telephone system. A chance sales call from Bromsgrove based reseller TMG plc introduced Charles to an exciting new system from a British company. "SpliceCom's maximiser was exactly what we were looking for in a new telephone system. Pure IP in its design, I especially liked the idea of it offering lower cost analogue system phones - ideal for the majority of our employees - in addition to higher specification IP phones. maximiser's ability to provide a single unified telephone system across our entire business, its flexibility in both provisioning and use and its pricing structure for upgrades - allowing us to clearly understand exactly what it will cost us to add more extensions at an existing showroom or to bring a new location on-board - made it the clear winner for Lance Owen."

Time To Change

The overwhelming need to refurbish the original Kingston building, proved to be the catalyst for the installation of the new telephone system. Although the timing of this event was not perfect - a new, 10 channel Primary Rate ISDN circuit required for Richmond could not be installed until long after the PBX would be commissioned - the new system had to be installed before the refurbishment of the site could commence. maximiser's inherent flexibility - one of several key factors that made it the preferred choice of Lance Owen - helped to alleviate this potential "showstopper." By initially delivering the telephone calls destined for Richmond to the ISDN trunks connected to the maximiser Call Server at Kingston and then routing them across the 256 kbps VPN to the Richmond showrooms, "normal" service was provided, totally invisible to customers and staff alike. To alleviate a potential VPN bandwidth bottleneck, temporary ISDN 2 lines were also installed for out going calls. Once the PRI service was commissioned at Richmond, the ISDN 2 circuits were dispensed with and the VPN link could return to its defined primary role, delivering internal and transferred telephone calls and IT data services. 

"The TMG engineers that were sent to our various sites were professional and were prepared to go out of their way to get the job done. Overall, we were very impressed with the attitude and determination of the team to provide us with a fully working system as soon as possible. Such levels of service are rare amongst our suppliers and I would not hesitate to recommend TMG and the SpliceCom maximiser system. It's a great product and we have yet to find anything that it cannot do," stated Andy Jackson, Group IT & Warranty Manager.

Immediate Results

All calls to the various showrooms and Group Service and Repair Centre are answered locally by a receptionist/operator using either the PCS Operators Console or a PCS 400 screen based IP Phone. The majority of employees use SpliceCom's PCS 10 business telephone, which they can choose to use with, or without, SpliceCom's PCS 50 Phone Partner, which runs on their desktop PC. This gives Lance Owen employees' access to the company wide phone directory - for internal, Departmental and external numbers - personal messaging, last number redial lists, visual call pick-up, and advanced Caller Display facilities including notes.

"The installation of the VPN and the maximiser telephone system was directly responsible for a 15% improvement in staff performance," stated Charles Stakowski. "We've achieved cost savings by eliminating the need for the external company we'd traditionally used to answer and transfer calls made to our 0870 number. Add to that the use of a single service between sites for all voice and data traffic and its clear to see just why we're so happy with the new system."

Making A Difference

The introduction of the BT VPN & SpliceCom telephone system has made an immediate impact across all aspects of business for The Lance Owen Group. By deploying a single telephone system and the same handsets at each of their eight locations its become far easier for them to present a unified image to their customers and removed the niggling communications issues faced by their managers as they move between sites. "maximiser allowed us to automate many aspects of the day-to-day management of our company communications," continues Charles Stakowski. "The SpliceLog call management system automatically generates an email to the Group directors should any call exceed pre-defined time or cost thresholds - and for high cost, premium rate calls. We also use maximiser's in-built call recording for training and reference purposes - again these call recordings can be automatically emailed to the relevant departmental manager."

Future Developments

The Lance Owen Group intends to investigate how other system features could further benefit their business. This includes the seamless delivery of DDI and Departmental calls to managers when they're out on the road - and to allow them to transfer the call to other colleagues - Hot Desking for employees who move between sites and the display of real-time information on calls queuing for departments or marketing campaigns on a large plasma screens for all to see.

Project Highlights

SpliceCom's maximiser has allowed The Lance Owen Group to provide a single unified business telephone system across its eight sites. Linked via a BT VPN and rolled-out over an eight-day period, maximiser helps Lance Owen to provide a consistent image to its customers' and suppliers' - no matter which location they might ring - and allows those employees visiting a different office access to identical facilities as their own.

System Summary

• One 4100 Call Server
• Seven 4140 Remote Call Servers
• Eight Voice Compression Cards
• Three 4330 Phone Modules
• Four 4315 Phone Modules
• 156 ISDN Trunks
• 206 Analogue Extensions
• 13 IP Extensions
• 100 PCS 10 System Phones
• PCS 50 Phone Partner Software
• 7 PCS 400 IP Touch Screen Phones
• PCS Operators Console
• 200 Voicemail Boxes
• Unified Messaging
• Auto Attendant
• Call Recording
• SpliceLog Call Management

Customer Benefits

• Improvement in customer service levels.
• Presents unified Group image
• Easy to transfer calls between Group locations

Commercial Benefits

• Scalable, IP based, modular system with no capacity limits provides a platform for future business expansion plans.
• Communications management enhanced through Call Recording and Call Management.
• Previous requirement for 3rd party 0870 call answering and transfer service eliminated.
• Single Virtual Private Network (VPN) transports voice and data between sites - reduces costs and increases bandwidth.
• Increased VPN bandwidth produced an Immediate 20% increase in staff productivity.

Staff Benefits

• Single system allows calls to be routed or transferred seamlessly between locations.
• Personal choice of using telephone with our without PCS 50 Phone Partner application.
• Exploring Mobility and Hot Desking for key staff.