2018 CRN Impact Awards: Brennan IT and Macpherson Kelley

Communication is key when it comes to doing business, but law firm Macpherson Kelley was hampered by an outdated telephony solution with little in the way of conferencing capabilities

The midmarket law firm, which is headquartered in Dandenong, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, was was locked into outdated technology. Staff were often forced to take lengthy commutes between offices to communicate with clients and felt disconnected due to geographic location and ineffective communication tools.

M+K wanted to mobilise its workforce with flexible working conditions and better video conferencing for internal and external meetings between office locations, as well as greater control over its unified communications system.

"Being a national law firm, previously it was difficult for staff and clients to collaborate effectively across different offices and states, resulting in costly interstate travel and time inefficiencies," said M+K chief information officer Matt Purves.

"In addition to this, we required a technology that was able to complement our new activity-based working practices. It also needed to be simple to ensure successful staff adoption."

In stepped Brennan IT, which rolled out a Cisco unified communication platform coupled with its own managed services to ease M+K's communication pains.

The Cisco Business Edition 6000 platform was selected for the project, which is a suite of communications solutions purpose-built for midmarket customers.

As part of the rollout, Brennan IT rolled out eight Cisco video conferencing units across M+K's offices, Cisco handsets for all staff, Cisco Meraki switches and access points in all locations, Cisco Call Manager at the head office, enterprise SIP trunking, an Enghouse interactive console and Cisco disaster recover.

Along with the Cisco solution, Brennan IT added its own managed services on top, including project services and additional fibre links to the Dandenong office.

The new Cisco solution allows M+K to consolidate all of its communication needs into a single platform with a centrally managed, virtualised voice and video call control platform that can deliver services for up to 1000 end users.

End users can now access corporate telephony and collaboration resources from any device using just an internet browser.

Brennan IT also gave M+K international access to video conferencing, which it said was a complex process but a necessary one for M+K to conduct business with its counterparts around the world.

Staff previously had to swap from a network cable to wi-fi when they moved away from their desk, causing their Citrix session to disconnect.

Thanks to the Cisco Meraki solution, laptops and mobile devices are now wi-fi only. Staff also now have access to full high-definition video conferencing through a browser, something that wasn't possible in the previous telephony environment.

"Now, employees can communicate with each other faster, work flexibly and can leverage exceptional video conferencing facilities which significantly reduces the need to travel," said Purves.

"This has in turn reduced our costs, broken down national barriers thus improving staff morale, culture and engagement."

Brennan IT is a finalist in the 'Workforce Empowerment' category in the 2018 CRN Impact Awards. For a list of all finalists and further details on the awards, please head to the CRN Impact Awards hub. The awards take place during the CRN Pipeline conference. You can get more information and purchase tickets here.