KordaMentha discovers Lync Server

KORDAMENTHA, one of the country's leading professional services and insolvency firms, needed to replace its ageing PABX telephone system with a centralised one connecting its Melbourne, Perth and Sydney offices.

"Managing handsets and voice communications individually in each office became a nightmare and we were spending so much time managing that, we couldn't as a matter of fact add any value anywhere else," KordaMentha's IT director, Ryan Wadsworth, said.

The company

The company, which has an annual turnover of $100 million-plus, used Ericsson BP 250s, an "old school" 20-year-old PABX analog system. Each system had to be managed individually from each site.

"Afterwards an hour presentation, we realised it wouldn't just fix the voice and management issues; it would in fact offer a new way for the whole business to operate," Mr Wadsworth said.

KordaMentha worked with Microsoft partner iComm to implement Microsoft Lync Server 2010. It has given the company a software-based phone system with all the features of a traditional PABX plus instant messaging, voicemail and video conferencing as then as the ability to share applications real time.

The backbone there for products like Exchange

"We already had the backbone there for products like Exchange, SharePoint and Windows Server, so it was a simple add-on from a requirements perspective," Mr Wadsworth said.

"The challenge was, the staff from the traditional, pick up a handset and dial zero, to using the computer to dial and using Outlook to dial and accepting calls on headsets, being wirelessly connected in another state, and your phone however rings," he said. "It was a complete new way of doing things."

KordaMentha founder and partner Mark Mentha believes the innovation has given the company an enormous competitive advantage.

"We could have 10, 20 or 30 banks and they could be all over the world in different time zones and through using this research we can see them, we can share our reports with them live and we can give them the ability to access our database and documentation live," he said.

The rollout cost for the project

The rollout cost for the project was about $70,000. With the addition of new USB-based handsets and headphones, it cost about $120,000.

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