Grant Thornton is the world’s fifth-largest professional services network of independent accounting and consulting firms. They provide assurance, tax, audit, and advisory services to businesses throughout the world. Grant Thornton operates in over 130 countries, employs over 47,000 people worldwide, and achieved $4.8 billion USD in global revenue in 2016. Within India, the company has over 3,000 employees across 14 different offices. They are on the fast track to becoming the largest advisory firm in India.
Establish a Centralized Communication Network
Grant Thornton has 14 offices across India and all of them were using their own, separate IP PBX to handle all communications. This setup created a number of problems for the company. It made it difficult to communicate between offices as they each had a separate network. It forced them to pay way too much for monthly bills as each office had a separate service plan. Calls from office to office were external calls and were often expensive. Finally, managing 14 different networks drastically increased support and maintenance costs. Grant Thornton was looking to replace their outdated Avaya PBXs with a new solution that would allow them to create a centralized network that could be shared by all branch offices in India. They wanted a solution that could offer an extensive set of unified communication features at an affordable cost. They also wanted to deploy a variety of powerful voice and video endpoints to take advantage of their new centralized solution.
Grandstream’s UCM6510, IP Phones, and IP Video Phones
Grant Thornton reached out to local technology integrator Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, who worked with their distributor, Cohesive Technologies, to design a solution. They considered a number of solutions from companies like Avaya and Alcatel, however, in the end, none were able to fulfill their requirements as Grandstream could. Not only does Grandstream offer a variety of IP PBX solutions, but they also offer all of the IP phones and IP Video phones that Grant Thornton would need.
Hitachi Systems and Grant Thornton chose the UCM6510 IP PBX to anchor the solution. The UCM6510 would allow Grant Thornton to put a fully-featured enterprise-grade IP PBX at each branch location that could be peered together to create one network shared between all branch offices. This robust IP PBX offers Grant Thornton scalability as each device supports up to 2000 users. It also offers the ability to unify multiple communication technologies, including voice, video, surveillance, and data, onto one network. The UCM6510 is one of the most cost-effective IP PBX solutions on the market as it provides all features upfront with no licensing fees or extra costs. One UCM6510 was installed at each of the 14 branch offices and then peered together to create one shared network.
To take advantage of their new UCM6510-anchored communications platform, Grant Thornton deployed Grandstream’s GXP1625, GXV3240, and GXP2140 IP phones throughout all offices. The GXP1625 offers a streamlined user experience, the GXP2140 offers a high-end desktop model and the video-enabled GXV3240 allows managers, to easily communicate through powerful video calls while also being able to access Android apps and other web productivity tools right on their desktop IP phones. To complete the solution, Epygi PRI Gateways were deployed to connect all UCM6510s and endpoints to create one shared, common network. SIP Trunks from Airtel and Tata were used to provide outside calling services for Grant Thornton.
The Results
The UCM6510 IP PBX offered Grant Thornton a centralized and scalable network that links all offices together to allow for easy and cost-effective inter-office communication. This shared network has allowed the company to streamline network management and drastically cut back on maintenance and service costs. The Grandstream IP Phones and IP Video Phones have given employees powerful and easy-to-use endpoints to further increase communication and productivity. Grant Thornton India is now thriving more than ever before thanks to their powerful, scalable and centralized communication solution from Grandstream.