For more than 20 years, Howard Kennedy’s telephone infrastructure consisted of an in-house PBX, desk phones, and landlines. When the firm’s senior leadership announced their goal of a more agile work environment, one of the first steps the technology team took was to add softphones to their existing IP telephony platform.
However, Jonathan Freedman, Howard Kennedy’s Head of Technology & Security, explains that this upgrade didn’t fully solve the firm’s mobility constraints—and even created some operational challenges of its own.
“With the new IP solution calls could be directed to company issued laptops, however, our colleagues still frequently needed to forward their calls to a mobile phone, and this had to be done manually every time to get those calls,” Jonathan says. “Everyone’s office number was still tied to their desk phone.”
As Jonathan points out, this introduced new frustrations for colleagues working remotely, visiting clients, or even collaborating with others in another part of the firm’s large office.
“People were getting frustrated at having to forward their extensions to different phones so frequently, or to call in to check their voicemails if they forgot,” he explains. “Also, for the people who didn’t have a company-issued mobile, making an outbound business call required them to expose their personal numbers.”
Jonathan’s team began looking for a more agile cloud-communications solution. When the pandemic lockdowns went into effect, Howard Kennedy’s search for a new communications provider took on a new urgency.
