Scothosts – A Call Navigator Success Story

By Alan Sawyer (Reality Telecom PLC)

The notion that a business must have a physical presence, where all employees come to work each day, arriving at 9.00am and leaving at 5.00pm, has been eroded in the past ten years.

Many factors have driven this change. A desire to cut costs has been an obvious requirement. Property, whether owned or leased, represents one of the top three areas of expenditure for a business. It is also one of the areas that is least responsive to change. Long inflexible leases and unsteady property markets have caused many problems for business, both in times of recession and growth.

Today, many companies are looking for other solutions. An increasingly mobile work force, out and about to meet with clients or business partners, has challenged the need for everyone to have a permanent desk at the office. Lifestyle preferences and the need to balance the demands of a home life with work means it may not always be convenient to be in the office. Similarly, increased use of contract staff or freelancers means the workforce is ever changing, and may not always be in one place.

In the case of Scothosts, a developer of turnkey web solutions for businesses based in Scotland, Call Navigator™, a new telephone answering and routing system was the catalyst which allowed the company to disband its office and link employees together via the internet, wherever they chose to work.

"We would never have used an office when we set up three years ago if Call Navigator™ had been around," said Eddie Gibbs, the company's director of marketing. "We don't need to be together in one place, and it's far too distracting an environment for the sort of work we do. Now that we all work remotely, wherever we prefer, productivity is much higher because everyone has the peace and quiet to focus on the job in hand."

Winners of a Winners on the Web (WOW) Award in 2003, Scothosts consists of eight people of whom six are software developers. The company builds bespoke web systems for companies of all shapes and sizes, including for Napier University and Yes Car Finance. The company's aim is to develop a suite of ready-made packages for businesses alongside tailor-made solutions.

Call Navigator™ works by answering calls as they come in with a professional voice greeting, which the caller responds to. They are then routed to their desired person or department. It can handle as many calls as required simultaneously. The difference between this and an ordinary Interactive Voice Response (IVR) unit is that the company has no large, expensive and complicated equipment to deal with. It is all managed online. It can be easily and instantly reset using the web in order to route the call to a new desired location. This could be to someone's phone in an office, or to any other number, whether mobile or a landline, or indeed to a fax. This means anyone can be accessible anywhere at any time. If something unexpected arises, as long as there is access to the internet, within minutes, Call Navigator™ can ensure callers get through to who they want to speak to.

The service has other benefits: for example, it comes with a memorable 0870 number, and if you are answering on behalf of more than one department, it will tell you which department an incoming call is for. The system also offers simple reporting features which allow companies to measure the volume of incoming traffic, for example, to gauge the success of an advertising campaign.

"As far as the outside world is concerned, we're still one company because we're all still available on one telephone number. In reality, we're spread all over the place, but that doesn't matter," says Gibbs.

Having taken care of the company's telecommunication system, Scothosts then had to ensure that its employees could access all of the information that they would usually have in an office, like shared files and databases for example. As part of this move, Scothosts had to develop a virtual private network (VPN) to enable everyone to access all files from one centralised location, including all client and company information. Customer support systems have also been developed online. This has required investment in new software, including state-of-the-art firewall technology to protect the VPN from online intruders.

Internal meetings are handled online. Everyone is equipped with cameras and microphones to net-conference from home. External meetings take place either at the client's offices, or else space is available to Scothosts at the offices of Scottish Enterprise.

Setting up the new flexible business structure cost Scothosts approximately £50,000. This covers everything from man-hours spent on current and new system development, to new software like Call Navigator™. However, in Eddie Gibbs' eyes this is money well spent. Annual savings are estimated to be in the region of £10,000 per year, which does not include the value of increased productivity for the business and lower personal costs for travel.

"We expect to be able to measure the overall cost savings next year, when the set-up costs for the new software have been recouped," concludes Gibbs. "For us the real benefit was productivity - we're just able to do so much more because we're not wasting time coming into the office and we're not distracted by the comings and goings of colleagues. It seems like a small thing, but it has already had a huge impact. It's a technology we could never have afforded in the past, because switchboards are so expensive, and frankly they're usually hard to programme. Now, we're able to work where we like, when we like, and be available to anyone who wants to call."