Case Study: Eversheds

Video Transcript

Brian Condron, Business Development, Kcom:

"My role is very much to work with customers, such as Eversheds, to understand what their business is looking to achieve, to work with the account teams, to work with the technical teams and make sure we develop the most appropriate fit solution for the customer, both now and in the future." 

Keith Gill, Head of IT infrastructure, Eversheds:

"So across the business it's all about integration, working with various jurisdictions across the world, but the key thing really is, from an ICT perspective is making sure it's all linked up."

BC:"It's really important for us to look at what they're trying to achieve from a business perspective. Once we've understood that then we can apply the right communications wrap around that from both a technology and a support and a managed services perspective and we've applied all that to this customer here."

KG:"So the key challenges really are trying to get the data, the information that they need to provide services to our clients and they need that data real time. They need to have a seamless connection all the way through to our data centres here in the UK and they need full access all the time to that data, so it's 24/7, 365. We operate all the time, across all time zones as well obviously as you can appreciate around the globe." 

BC:"The solution for Eversheds is made up from a number of different elements providing communications and connectivity. I think what's really important for Eversheds is the ability to be able to deliver applications seamlessly across their network, security is absolutely key to them as a business, and also working with a partner who's got the agility and speed for them to be able to scale out to new locations but more importantly to be able to manage it for them." 

KG:"So Kcom came in, listened to my team primarily about their challenges with the network etc. But then they also got to also understand what our end users needed and I think that's the main difference actually from previous organisations that I worked with in the communications space. They understood what our fee-earning staff need, what applications we use."

BC:"So very much our approach was one: understand the business objectives, and then get the right technical skills engaged with the customer, so that was from a design perspective, that was from an implementation perspective but also that was from a manage and support perspective as well so it's encompassing lots of different divisions within Kcom to build an ultimate customer solution."

KG:"So the proposed solution was to link all of our offices with an MPLS network and allow full connectivity. To allow all of our systems, our end users, our applications all to function seamlessly, to allow our business to thrive.As our business developed and expanded we went from being a regionalised law firm to a big international law firm quite rapidly and so it was very important for us to have a partner, a strategic partner, like Kcom, to grow with us as a business." 

BC: "The relationship has gone extremely well, mostly because the customer, Eversheds, appreciates we're approaching it from a partnership perspective rather than a customer-supplier relationship perspective so they appreciate the fact that we understand the business, we look to understand what the business is looking to achieve so we can apply the right solution and the right technical fit to them as a business both now but also as they expand and develop in the future as well."

KG: "I've really enjoyed working with Kcom. They were keen to understand our business requirements, they were keen to work with us and fit in with our strategy as well. Kcom understood that we had a strategic approach to acquiring new international offices, developing and growing our business in international offices, and were able to offer a solution that enabled us to do that. The Eversheds staff have all benefitted from this. It's kind of hard to summarise on their behalf, it's almost good if they don't notice that the network's there. What I want to make sure is that the networks there, it's always on; it's almost like electricity to them. They just expect it to be there, and almost take it for granted, it's that reliable."