Azzurri has migrated South Lanarkshire’s entire fixed line voice estate from BT (2,000 lines), while the council’s existing non-geographic numbers shift to Azzurri’s own virtual network. All calls are now captured and analysed via Azzurri’s ITEM (Intelligent Telecoms Expense Management) online management portal, which delivers clear visibility of the council’s telecoms assets and costs. Azzurri has also introduced a new audio conferencing facility.
South Lanarkshire, like virtually all Public Sector organisations, were faced with the challenge of saving money whilst maintaining and in many cases enhancing the services they provide to their citizens. They arrived at the point where they wanted to put out the provision of their networks services to tender, which included fixed calls and lines, non-geographic numbers and audio conferencing. They approached this extremely thoroughly, inviting 11 suppliers to bid for the contract via the Buying Solutions Framework.
Each bid was assessed against rigorous scoring criteria, with a number of different areas analysed. Paul McNair, IT Manager (Networks) for South Lanarkshire said: “There was a degree of nervousness about moving away from BT as our fixed line provider. The service we were receiving was mixed, but sometimes its better the devil you know, especially if you’re working with a big brand, like BT.”
McNair continues: “But the procurement process helped us understand that we could get much better service and support, hugely better value and vastly improved management information by moving to another supplier.”