Case Study: Northern Rail

Outdated communications

Prior to working with Kcom, Northern Rail was using a legacy network which had limited functionality and was not very cost-effective. Five years ago Northern Rail re-located its head office to a premise which had an existing WAN infrastructure in place. This provided Northern Rail with the opportunity to improve connectivity and the contract was put out to tender. 

New voice and data networks

The first phase was to implement a new voice network, connecting the head office with 20 of Northern Rail's larger stations. The new system has made employees' lives simpler through enhanced functionality such as call forwarding and audio conferencing. More recently, a new data network has been added, enabling Northern Rail's teams to operate with greater efficiency. Now staff at Northern Rail's 20 disparate offices and stations have gained a more efficient means of communication.

The added benefit of having one supplier for both its voice and data networks has saved Northern Rail a considerable amount in time and costs. Additional savings have been made, including implementing free-of-charge inter-company calls. Overall, Northern Rail estimates that cost savings have been in the region of 50% over the past five years.

Kcom has also developed a specific disaster recovery strategy to safeguard Northern Rail's mission-critical data. This means that the organisation can be up and running quickly in the event of the IT systems failing. Overall, Kcom has provided Northern Rail with the communications technology needed to run a 21st century business. 

Connecting all sites

With the head office and 20 of its sites already connected, Northern Rail will be working with Kcom to connect the remainder of the smaller stations. This is another exciting step forward for the organisation, as it continues to bring its 4,800 employees together as part of a unified team. Through enhanced connectivity, Northern Rail is working more effectively as a business, and is better able to deliver a high quality service to its customers.

Our relationship is based on the fact that we know Kcom always has, and always will provide an excellent service. We will continue to work together to move our business forward and to ensure Northern Rail is best-placed to meet its customers' needs. Albert Gribben, Procurement Manager Systems, Northern Rail.