HM Government

As part of the public sector estate rationalisation scheme, one large UK Government department was preparing to sell their head office and merge others, while making better use of available space elsewhere.

Faced with the challenge of rationalising their office estate in a short space of time, the organisation elected to minimise disruption to their 4,500 staff by retaining their existing phone numbers during the move. Once moved, staff would all be given new 0300 numbers.

The challenge was to maintain continuity of service across multiple technology platforms during such a complex and large-scale move of premises.

The organisation chose Smartnumbers – a cloud-based call redirection service which diverts calls virtually from anywhere to anywhere across any combination of fixed or mobile networks.

With Smartnumbers, call routing can be changed in real-time via an online portal or by a simple phone call, improving business resilience and continuity.

The service works with whatever infrastructure an organisation already has in place – in this case it has helped the Government department protect calls from disruption during both a move of office and a transition from a legacy to an IP telephony environment.

Using Smartnumbers has enabled the department to maintain seamless business continuity during the restructuring.

Additionally, with Smartnumbers in place after the move, the department is more resilient as calls can be quickly redirected to another location or a mobile if an office becomes unavailable for any reason.

Calls can now be delivered wherever they are needed, whether to the old telephone numbers or the new 0300 numbers, and the telephone numbers can run in parallel for as long as necessary, so the upheaval of changing longstanding published numbers is minimised.