“I think what impressed us most was their knowledge and experience which was far away from other telephony suppliers.”
Colin Kelly, ICT Manager, Insight Financial Services

Colin Kelly, ICT Manager, Insight Financial Services

Insight Financial Services (IFS) has eight locations around the south east comprising a group of related but distinct companies in the business of financial advice, commercial property and land agency.

To improve the efficiency of the group it naturally seeks to operate a single IT and communications platform – sharing investment between the companies. The only snag is that some of the businesses are subject to financial services regulations and consequently customer data and even conversations must be secured within the business.

Colin Kelly, ICT Manager first encountered Zen as the supplier to the Colchester Business Centre (see that story elsewhere on this site) and was impressed by their capability, knowledge and service.

“I invited them to tender for design, installation and management of a telephony system to replace the PBX we had been using to connect our branches.” he explains.

The tender opportunity came up because a nameless national telco (whose favourite colour might be red), failed to supply a system which met the stringent security demands of the regulated business.

The failure was all the more inconvenient for IFS as it had been strung along by the telco for a year or more as it developed a new system. Zen were immediately under pressure therefore to meet a pressing requirement.

“I think what impressed us most was their knowledge and experience which was far away from other telephony suppliers.” declares Colin Kelly. “Because they operate in the IT and network infrastructure arena, they have a deeper knowledge of the related technologies.”

That’s crucial knowledge today as telephony is increasingly IP based – no longer a discrete environment it now shares capacity and very often switches with the rest of an organisation’s data traffic.

Zen’s understanding of the need for security throughout the system and their experience working with network infrastructure meant they designed the system with security in mind.

Such added value – ahead of other suppliers – means they are reliable long term partners.

“They understand our business and our technology as well as commercial needs, and having them on board takes away the stress and worry of system failures and security, which in a regulated world cannot be taken too lightly.”

Solution technical details

• Cisco Meraki
• 3CX
• VDC – Virtual Servers
• Connectivity
• SIP Trunks