Wedlake Bell

NEC PHILIPS REFRESHES COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE AT WEDLAKE BELL

-New infrastructure underpins law firm’s mobile working strategy-

Wedlake Bell, one of London’s oldest and most respected law firms, has gone live with a new open standard, SIP based communications infrastructure from NEC Unified Solutions. The project also included a new disaster recovery contingency option and an upgrade of the company’s email platform to Microsoft Exchange 2007. The new SIP infrastructure provides Wedlake Bell with a more resilient and open platform which improves security, performance and ease of use. In addition, the platform allows the law firm to benefit from the latest IP technology whilst still utilising its existing investment in traditional TDM telephony.

The NEC communications platform provides Wedlake Bell’s staff with all the functionality expected from a standard PBX connection - such as call transferring, holding and conferencing - regardless of whether they are connected directly to the PBX or connected via SIP-based phones over a LAN connection. In addition, the move to the IP solution will enable Wedlake Bell to undertake performance management and fault reporting across both the traditional and IP phones.

As part of the project, NEC has also moved Wedlake Bell from the 2003 version of Microsoft Exchange to the full 2007 suite, which offers Unified Messaging and Outlook Anywhere functionality. This move forms part of the law firm’s strategy to embrace flexible working practices across the business. Wedlake Bell’s mobile workers have remote access to Exchange servers from the Internet, and they will be able to manage emails, calendars and voicemails on the move, via PDA or mobile phone devices. In addition, users will be able to take advantage of interactive voice technology to listen and reply to messages, as well as manage their calendars.

Linda Webster, Head of IT at Wedlake Bell explains, “We are one of London's oldest law firms, but we pride ourselves on being flexible, innovative and quick on our feet – and technology plays a key part in helping us meet these objectives. By working with NEC we have been able to upgrade our IT and Communications infrastructure, in order to take advantage of the latest IP technology, and to adopt a much more flexible method of working; our staff can now work remotely when it is appropriate without having any impact on their productivity.”

Webster continues, “NEC have provided us with a secure, open and resilient IT platform but critically they have also ensured that we are able to maximise our existing infrastructure investment and make the most of the technology that we already have in place. The NEC consultants were able to help us identify which parts of our infrastructure needed to be upgraded in order to deliver most value across the business, and their project management and technical skills were of real value to us during this process.”

Webster concludes, “We have been working with NEC for many years now and have developed an excellent working relationship with them. The NEC consultants are knowledgeable, proactive and go out of their way to understand our requirements. At Wedlake Bell we aim to provide practical, forward thinking advice to our clients, that supports their commercial objectives and this is also true of the NEC team; their commercial astuteness and quality of delivery is unrivalled and they have a proven product portfolio. We look forward to a long-lasting business partnership.” <NEXT>