Case Study: Clyde & CO

Having used BT for many years we were certainly aware that there could be cost reductions to be had by reviewing our services and a potential for better overall account management and customer service. Like all businesses in the professional service sector our fixed line and mobile business communications are absolutely critical to the business and we were only willing to consider change if we were certain we would be well looked after and would experience minimal disruption to our services.

Our previous facilities manager had begun conversation with SCG consulting which I then picked up in February 2012. We understood they looked after a large number of firms in the legal sector across Scotland and so we were willing to listen.

One of our key frustrations with our incumbent set up was that we had different bills coming through on a quarterly and monthly basis. The total admin time to account for these was several hours per month. What was even more frustrating was that all of our services were under different contract terms and some were even under management from different sections of BT. As a result, managing the account internally was a challenge.

Along with this we were subject to inflexible contract terms when setting up new sites, meaning any new services automatically took on a 5 year term. Moreover we had a few services that were not being used, but due to the complexity of our billing we had no idea how to cancel them.

With regards to our mobile fleet we were also aware that some of our connections did not have appropriate usage bundles associated with them which creating an excess cost to the firm every month.  As we were set to scale up our operation it was becoming increasingly important to have this situation sorted. 

Our first step on the review process was to provide a full range of billing information to SCG who were then able to put together a comprehensive analysis of the total expenditure across our sites. In comparison to our spend at the time the difference with SCG indicated a substantial 40% cost reduction on our fixed line services alone.

However, what was most important was that we would have the opportunity to develop a relationship with an account manager who would be part of the diamond experience team. We were told this would mean we have immediate help from a dedicated team of account mangers reachable within 4 rings in the UK based headquarters.

This definitely seemed to be a massive improvement on our incumbent set up. It took several meetings before we were completely comfortable that what was being promised could be delivered and that all areas of our telecoms estate were in proper consideration. 

"Our fixed line transfer was completely seamless, as had been promised.  Our mobile transfer only saw minor downtime as we were moving to another network and the only signal issue we did have was rectified very quickly by the customer service team.  

Since then we have been delighted with the on-going service from our principle customer service account manager. He has been completely dedicated to helping us with any question or issue and we feel we are truly being looked after by a team that understand our business needs. Along with this the user-friendly online billing software will enable us to save almost 10 working days every year in accounting time.

Overall our experience with SCG Consulting and parent company SCG Toghether has been extremely positive and we are even set to reduce our costs by as much as 40% per annum over our previous set up."

Sheila Hogg - Facilities Manager