Press Release
Garden Court Chambers, the largest barristers’ chambers in London, is enhancing and simplifying communications and collaboration for its barristers, clerical and admin staff with a digital workplace solution built on the Avaya OneCloud™ UCaaS platform and leading partner Fortay Connect. With installation of Avaya Cloud Office™ by RingCentral® and migration of 275 users completed in record time during April, communications at the Lincoln’s Inn-based chambers were transformed into a flexible, always-on video conferencing and workstream collaboration solution to support working from anywhere.
Client experiences matter when calling for legal advice, and the experiences of the legal team and ability to efficiently connect to the client also matter. Garden Court Chambers’ previous communications system had traditional phones on each barrister’s desk with calls transferred through the switchboard. This was a limited way of working. It meant a receptionist had to be on-site to manage the switchboard and, with only a few licenses available, video conferences had to be set-up by staff. Barristers were unable to move quickly to fulfil their own business needs – to find a phone number they had to call reception, and requests for expensive licenses to alternative video conferencing apps were becoming more frequent. In addition, although it was usual for barristers working away from the chambers to provide clients with their mobile numbers, transferring calls between mobiles was arduous and call-forwarding from a desk phone to a mobile number could only be done by the IT admin logging into the phone system.
“Barristers’ work can be unpredictable and often they need to be available 24/7, so they need a digital workplace without departmental silos, always-on access to information from any location, at any time, and persistent, group workstream collaboration for a true client- and team-centric experience,” says Dan Bunce, IT Systems Project Manager for Garden Court Chambers. “With Avaya Cloud Office, our barristers get a single number for calls, chat, video meetings, file sharing and continuous collaboration that reaches them wherever they are, on whatever device they’re using. They can also easily manage their own preferences for call forwarding, availability, presence, messaging, and video meetings, removing the burden from IT admin, staff and reception.”
Fortay Connect worked as a trusted advisor to Garden Court Chambers, and were able to understand their requirements, provide market insights and optimise the evaluation process. Following a competitive proposal, Garden Court Chambers chose Avaya Cloud Office for its ability to deliver a world-class all-in-one cloud communications solution as well as stand-out features such as call analytics, straightforward billing and ease of-use.
“I particularly wanted call analytics so I could investigate reasons why video or sound might be poor and fix it. Simple billing was also important. Unlike other solutions, Avaya’s pricing is transparent and granular with a single predictable monthly bill and no hidden tariffs or monthly hardware costs,” says Dan Bunce. “The speed of deployment by Avaya and Fortay Connect – in under a month – ensured no working days were lost, which was crucial in protecting the barristers’ business.”
Steve Joyner, Managing Director UK&I Avaya, said: “It’s great to see Garden Court Chambers empower its barristers with Avaya so they can move forward into the dynamic and collaborative new world of work with a communications technology platform that supports the often-unplanned nature of their profession. The barristers can now depend on a workstream collaboration solution that is reliable, secure and delivers great experiences for them, their clients, partners and chambers’ staff, whether in the office, home or mobile.”
Avaya OneCloud UCaaS solutions have transformed the traditional video meeting to help businesses meet the challenges of an unpredictable, work-from-anywhere world through continuous, multiexperience collaboration that empowers teams to be productive across departments and locations whilst avoiding video call fatigue.
