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Bord Gรกis Case Study | Unified Communications Solutions

2 Case Study — Bord Gáis

Overview By deploying a high quality visual communications solution, eircom has helped Bord Gáis to slash time devoted to travel by 20% and significantly boost staff productivity. For Bord Gáis, this has delivered significant cost-savings and supported the company’s commitment to reduce its carbon footprint.

Bord Gáis is one of Ireland’s leading energy suppliers, employing approximately 90 staff across two main business areas: Networks and Energy. The structure of the Irish energy industry has changed significantly with recent market liberalisation. In response to this, Bord Gáis has expanded into the electricity supply market, and today has over 630,000 gas and electricity customers.

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“We were impressed with eircom’s technical expertise and support capabilities. We felt that they would provide us with a technology solution, which would deliver commercial and technical flexibility.”

John Mullins, Chief Executive Officer at Bord Gáis

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Technical flexibility Integrating business functions To increase its service levels Bord Gáis has become heavily reliant on technology, with many members of staff using video.

However, legacy systems were slow, and audio and visual communications were often out of sync.

John Mullins, Chief Executive Officer at Bord Gáis explains: “Our people are keen advocates of video but as the quality was poor, we saw an upsurge in staff commuting between our two sites in Cork and Dublin to attend meetings. A roundtrip would take seven hours, whether by road, rail or air. This was not only costly to the business but also enormously inefficient in terms of staff productivity.”

Platform for technical flexibility Following a rigorous tender process, Bord Gáis selected eircom to design and deploy an innovative, cost-effective video communications platform, based on TANDBERG infrastructure and endpoints.

Andrew O’Kelly, Chief Architect, eircom Business: “Our approach focuses on deploying practical, cost-efficient technology solutions to real business issues. The TANDBERG brand is synonymous with quality and their solutions offer swift return on investment. We knew that together we could deliver on Bord Gáis’s vision of bringing people together to share information and collaborate in a virtual environment.”

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“As Bord Gáis continues to evolve in the Irish energy market, we’ll be using video to enable us to stay ahead of the game – driving efficiency throughout our operations, so that we can deliver a better service to our customers.”

John Mullins, Chief Executive Officer, Bord Gáis.

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Greater productivity Using video to stay ahead Bord Gáis has seen a real transformation in its business operations, enabling it to cut travel by 20%, be kinder to the environment and allow the company to plough the cost-savings into other strategic areas of the business.

Mullins says: “The new video conferencing solution was an overnight success and has made a phenomenal difference to our workforce. With staff spending less time out of the office decisions can be made more quickly, while at the same time we’re backing our commitment to limit our carbon footprint.”

He continues: “We have been struck by the quality of video, particularly the synchronisation of speech and audio, and the sharpness of images. It really is like the people on our screens are in the same room as ourselves.”

Bord Gáis is also capitalising on the benefits of TANDBERG Content Server, which enables the CEO to develop webcasts to communicate with staff over the internet. “Webcasts are a great medium for delivering important company-wide messages,” adds Mullins. “I’m able to deliver a broadcast from my office using video, and those staff who miss it can retrieve the recording at a time to suit themselves.”

Bord Gáis now plans to arm senior managers with webcams, so they are able to communicate from their desk with their peers. This will enable managers to come together and bridge the knowledge gap between departments.

Furthermore, the company is investigating ways to use video to facilitate communications with customers and suppliers.

Mullins concludes: “As Bord Gáis continues to evolve in the Irish energy market, we’ll be using video to enable us to stay ahead of the game – driving efficiency throughout our operations, so that we can deliver a better service to our customers.”

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Watch Video John Mullins discusses unified communications in action

John Mullins Chief Executive Officer, Bord Gáis

Overview eircom solutions at a glance

• A network upgrade with a 100 Megabit circuit to the Cork office provides bandwidth and Quality of Service (QoS) for the new video conferencing solution.

• 15 TANDBERG endpoints are now shared between the offices in Cork and Dublin ranging from personal desktops to larger units for meeting rooms.

• The project implementation phase was managed and delivered in just six weeks, by a joint team consisting of eircom and Bord Gáis engineers.

• Bord Gáis has plans to roll the solution out to Limerick, Galway and Waterford in the future.

Get In Touch To find out how eircom Unified Communications Solutions can benefit your business, please contact your eircom account manager. www.eircomforbusiness.ie