Find out about our latest AEC customer success stories and how we worked in partnership to enable their digital transformation
Launching in 1990, Glenn Howells Architects is a leading UK architectural design studio, with a 140‐ strong creative team delivering innovative projects from offices in both London and Birmingham – all driven by the belief that our physical spaces can make a tangible difference in the lives of both individuals and communities.
Like all companies within the architectural sector, Glenn Howells Architects depend on close collaboration between team members to deliver innovative designs that draw on the full scope of their creativity. While their legacy voice system, supplemented with multiple UC platforms, had proven adequate in this
regard for some time, the onset of COVID‐19, and the resulting move to remote working, meant that the system was being utilised at a scale that had never been tried before.
The system quickly revealed its limitations in this regard, having no softphone capabilities outside of the company VPN, and lacking the capacity to manage the number of team members now connecting to the
corporate network via personal devices each day. Having already established a strong working relationship with Exponential‐e over the years, they were selected as the technology partner to propose and deliver a solution in response to these challenges, ensuring the deployment would be achieved with minimal disruption and ensure the entire creative team could adapt to the new working model straight away.
Following a detailed analysis of their requirements, budget, and existing infrastructure, Microsoft Teams Calling, delivered through an as-a-Service model, proved a perfect fit for Glen Howells Architects’ immediate and long-term needs.
As a Cloud-based solution, TCaaS was deployed rapidly across their infrastructure, under the supervision of a dedicated project team, who remained in regular contact before and after the deployment process to ensure its success and ensure any concerns could be swiftly resolved.
This hands-on support meant that uptake of the new solution across Glen Howells Architects’ creative team was achieved extremely quickly, to the extent Teams became their default tool for remote collaboration between both colleagues and clients, completely replacing the previous, disparate selection of UC solutions.
The success of this deployment helped Glen Howells maintain their dynamic creative processes and customer engagement throughout the lockdowns of 2020, while simultaneously enhancing their future agility and scalability, and strengthening their working relationship with Exponential-e. Plans are already in place for further solutions to be integrated into Glen Howells Architects’ IT infrastructure, in order to build on these successes.
This hands-on support meant that uptake of the new solution across Glenn Howells Architects’ creative team was achieved extremely quickly, to the extent Teams became their default tool for remote collaboration between both colleagues and clients, completely replacing the previous, disparate selection of UC solutions.
The success of this deployment helped Glenn Howells maintain their dynamic creative processes and customer engagement throughout the lockdowns of 2020, while simultaneously enhancing their future agility and scalability, and strengthening their working relationship with Exponential-e. Plans are already in place for further solutions to be integrated into Glenn Howells Architects’ IT infrastructure, in order to build on these successes.
Operating from offices in London, Norwich, and Cambridge, Conisbee offers structural and civil engineering solutions that have supported the creation of numerous award-winning buildings – ranging from simple refurbishments to the most complex new builds – across the UK and internationally.
Like other forward-thinking firms across the AEC sector, Conisbee have embraced the journey to the Cloud in order to optimise the overall flexibility, security, and resilience of their IT infrastructure. This journey took place in parallel with an expansion into a number of smaller regional offices, and the gradual phasing out of legacy systems, which presented additional challenges when it came to enabling seamless cross-site collaboration between teams and their clients, considering the scale and complexity of typical architectural models.
In order to manage these challenges and create an IT infrastructure that would support their ongoing growth and provide the ability to pivot in response to changes in the digital landscape, Conisbee selected Exponential-e as their Cloud and connectivity partner.
Following an analysis of the existing legacy systems and the connectivity requirements for the new sites, end-of-life solutions were migrated to the cloud, allowing for new cost savings and efficiencies.
Furthermore, to provide a flexible platform for online communication and collaboration, Office 365 was implemented, putting a range of tools at teams’ fingers through a single pane of glass. all this was underpinned by secure, high-performance connectivity, to guarantee consistency and availability for all business-critical applications.
The inherent flexibility of this new infrastructure was proven in the early months of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced firms across the country to begin working remotely, in line with social distancing regulations.
Conisbee’s Cloud journey continues, with the support of their Exponential-e account team. This will support effective hybrid working in the post-COVID landscape, with staff able to communicate and collaborate remotely, in the office, or on the move, accessing the critical platforms they depend on through a range of devices, with zero compromises in terms of either security or performance.
In this way, Conisbee’s partnership demonstrates the value a well-considered digital transformation strategy, supported by a trusted technology partner, can bring to the AEC sector as a whole, allowing for tangible cost savings, more flexible working, and the successful delivery of the most innovative, sustainable, and enjoyable buildings.
