At a glance
FOUNDED 1990
# OF CANDIDATES PLACED 5,000
# OF COUNTRIES 23
# OF CONTINENTS 6
CD Recruitment (CD) is a specialist recruitment firm building IT sales, IT technical, and IT marketing teams for businesses across the globe. Based in Epsom, England, CD prides itself on introducing high performing candidates to new, primarily VC-backed companies that are looking to rapidly expand their teams in global markets.
Like any other recruitment firm, CD relies heavily on a capable phone system, which is essential for communicating with clients and candidates to set up interviews, negotiate contracts, and take client briefs.
“Our phone system is our lifeblood”
says Brad Luton, Managing Director of CD.
“If it goes down at any point, we immediately start losing revenue. That’s a big red flag.”
When communication is critical to a business, you need a system that works. CD experienced many challenges and gaps with its previous provider – from outages and system failures to a lack of video, chat, and mobile. For CD, the absence of a mobile solution meant that employees were not only racking up expensive phone bills but also unable to access company tools with traveling. The company was incurring unpredictable costs and harming its international expansion plans.
“We are beginning to do more and more business in Europe and the U.S.,”
Brad adds.
“And as our employees travel the world, I need to know that they will have access to all of their calls, wherever they are.”
Like many other recruiting firms, CD measured its productivity around total time spent on the phone and the frequency of calls. With its previous provider, the company lacked an analytics tool to accurately measure and analyze productivity.
Agencies fight hard to be at the top of their game on every call to win and retain new clients and candidates. Without any call recording or shadowing function, CD was at a major disadvantage. It risked being outpaced by more technologically-advanced competitors.
Solution
To position the business for future success, CD began searching for a unified communications (UC) provider that could transform their telephony system into a mobile-ready, resilient, and reliable business resource.
“We spoke to several solution providers, but we found that none of them could provide the functionality and usability we needed. We’ve just set up a young, dynamic team in a new office in Manchester. They prefer to work on mobiles, so we knew long term we wouldn’t invest in another premise-based system. That’s why we decided to choose a cloud UC provider like Vision Voice. They made the effort to understand our business model and then worked with us to implement the solution at a pace that matched our requirements.”
Vision Voice provided a cloud communications strategy for CD based on a single software platform.
- Platform characteristics:
- Multiple, global data centers to guarantee system reliability
- Location-based call routing through global data centres (not US or UK only)
- Mobile app for iOS and Android phones
- Consistent user experience across all devices
- Single, unified, managed solution allowing for rapid activation and easy expansion
- Key user features:
- Unified tools including VoIP, instant messaging, video, and audio conferencing
- Access to all services across all mobile devices, wherever and whenever employees need them
- Extended call functions such as call recording, emailed voicemail, and call shadowing
- Full analytics dashboard to review call activities across all devices
- Platform integration with Salesforce to reduce CRM admin using automated activity logging and dialing (click-to-call)
Results
Increased productivity
The introduction of the mobile app across all devices has increased the number of completed outbound and inbound calls. It allows staff to access and respond to their messages and voicemails whenever and wherever they are.
Reduced costs
By implementing the Vision Voice platform, CD was immediately able to eliminate all chargeable landline calls and bring mobile bills under tighter control. This lead to a 50% reduction in monthly service fees against its previous provider.
A more engaged workforce
After implementing the Vision Voice solution, the management team at CD received a lot of positive feedback from staff. They felt like the company was investing in technology to make their daily tasks easier and consequently, make them more successful in their work.
Quick time to launch
The implementation of the cloud-based platform took less than half the time of a premise-based solution, meaning the increased functionality could be delivered first to the team in Manchester and then to head office in Epsom in a matter of weeks.
Accelerated growth
As part of the new call functions, CD staff can now call using in-country phone numbers, which is helping to accelerate their growth in foreign markets.
New platform analytics
The analytics dashboards are allowing business leaders to improve the management and organization of frontline teams and enhance training programs.
