Bodum

Who are Bodum?

Bodum was started in Denmark in 1944 by Peter Bodum, wholesaling a small variety of houseware and kitchen products by Danish manufacturers. In 1979, the very high profile, design-led maker of sophisticated coffee brewing systems moved from Denmark to Switzerland where its head office is still located today. It now operates in 17 countries and has 52 stores worldwide in addition to its many concessions within department stores.

Bodum's UK headquarters are in Northampton, with its warehousing operation in Nottinghamshire and four major stores in London, Bicester, York and Livingston. In addition to staff at these six sites, there are also a number of home-based employees looking after the concession shops throughout the UK.

What were Bodum's requirements?

On the voice side, the company's PBX is operated out of the Northampton HQ. Staff here need to communicate with the shops, warehouse and colleagues based offsite, as well as customers and suppliers. The shops and staff based remotely have similar voice requirements.

As far as data is concerned, files are shared between all locations; whether it's a stock report compiled and sent out from the warehouse or regular updates to the sales and marketing database at head office, high speed, secure access is a must for the day-to-day operation of the business.

Remote workers and senior managers need to be in touch with their colleagues at all times when out on the road, so an appropriate mobile solution is an absolute necessity.

For a number of years, Bodum had used multiple suppliers to fulfil its voice, data and mobile requirements in the UK and in 2004, a number of these contracts were coming up for renewal. This, combined with mobile coverage issues being experienced by a number of senior members of staff in the UK, led Marc Goddard, Bodum UK's Operations Manager responsible for Telecoms & IT, to start researching the market for a more streamlined communications solution.

"Dealing with four different suppliers was becoming increasingly difficult as our needs became more complex, so given the opportunity to change things, I was keen to get them all under one banner, signing up with one company who could provide us with everything we needed. Surprisingly, Timico was the only company I could find offering a genuine 'one-stop-shop'."

The solution provided by Timico

Marc Goddard approached Timico in 2004, having heard the company described as an integrator of 'best-of-breed' communication services. Although keen to simplify his communication set-up, he was understandably nervous about the possible temporary disruption that the physical transfer of all of his key communication services might cause to the business.

However, once the details of Timico's proposed integrated solution had been agreed, Timico's nominated Corporate Sales Manager and technical support team dedicated a lot of time to the planning of the migration of each service, working closely with Marc and liaising with Bodum's existing suppliers on his behalf, ensuring that each migration ran as smoothly as possible.

"For me, the migration was key. I knew that if that went well, the rest would be plain sailing. Everything from the porting of the mobile numbers, the transfer of the analogue lines and the migration of the DSL lines went without a hitch. It all happened when Timico said it would happen, with absolutely no disruption to my users at all."

Fixed and broadband communications

Timico took over the analogue lines serving the 30 DDIs on the Northampton PBX and also installed 4 analogue lines in each of the Bodum shops in addition to Carrier-Pre-Selection services in the homes of each of the remote workers, providing lower cost national and international call charges and line rental, which are charged back to Bodum on a single invoice along with all of the other services supplied by Timico.

To meet Bodum's data requirements, Timico recommended a 1:1 un-contended broadband connection into HQ, coupled with 512K broadband for each of the company's remote workers, shops and the company's warehouse operation, with the necessary routers to structure, manage and secure access to the VPN.

Mobilising the business

Ten of Bodum UK's staff have been equipped with phones on the Timico network via our MVNO licence with T-Mobile and another two are using Timico datacards to access the VPN via their laptops. Some users opted to keep their existing handsets and be supplied with a new SIM, whilst others went for the complete Timico package.

"We had increasingly been experiencing nationwide coverage issues with Orange and making the switch to T-Mobile cleared those up straightaway."

Why did Bodum choose Timico?

Having met Timico's technical support team very early on, Marc was confident that they had the knowledge and experience to support him in the design and ongoing management of the VPN. He also felt confident that the strength of their relationships with their partners and other telcos within the industry would mean that the migration would go as smoothly as possible.

He was also keen on Timico's Online Account Management tool and the visibility offered by the structure of the company's monthly invoices.

"Moving from umpteen invoices a month, to a single bill for all of our services has been a godsend. We were starting to experience administration-overload, so having the information in one place makes a real difference. The fact that our charges are broken down by cost centre gives us much more control over what we're spending in the three areas."