Transcription of Case Study

My name's Gareth Williams. I'm the finance manager at Unified World Communications. Unified World Communications was established 34 years ago. We specialise in office phone systems, mobile, M2M, IOT, broadband and digital solutions. We are one of Vodafone's longest serving partners. Previous to using the Layer we were very Excel based. This did create many problems with the business, primarily we were struggling with commissions and the amount of tariffs for all the different networks. So, being in the telecoms industry for 34 years, naturally we've seen a lot of products come and go, but up until a point, we decided that we probably needed a CRM system that didn't just incorporate customer service. The opportunity of creating a telecoms based system for Unified World was one that we couldn't pass. So, when we brought the Layer onto Unified World back in 2015, predominantly the bulk of the business was based on mobiles.

Since then we've brought some new products into the business. More recently, we have launched our VoIP offering of Talk Express. It's been very, very easy, very simple to put the tariffs into wire. We can also generate quotes very quickly on all the products, as we have individual templates for quoting on each product that we offer. So, the Layer has helped Unified World immensely with the sales side of the business, it has allowed us to collate all the finance information together under one CRM system. This in turn helps us internally with reporting, and it has helped grow the business.

The reporting side of the Layer for Unified World is quite fascinating. We have access to information which we previously never used. We can very, very quickly now run reports based on contract end dates, and we can look at customers based on RPU. When we do marketing campaigns, we can very quickly identify those customers who may be missing a certain product, which then allows us to directly contact and market the customer more appropriately, rather than just doing a blanket email or marketing campaign to every customer.

So, the Layer has certainly helped the customer service department. As a company we pride ourselves on customer service. But what it's helped us to do, more specifically on the larger corporate customers, we can now track the amount of time that we spend on each customer. When a phone call comes in, or when an email comes in with a task, the service guys can now log the amount of time spent per customer. This then allows us to analyse the data at the end of the contract, and quantify how long and basically the cost to how much we've spent on that customer. This then helps us massively on retention.

So, the main benefits of using the Layer over the last four years, it has definitely cut down human error. It also gives us access to an array of information, which we probably had previously, but not in one central ask point. The support we've received from the Layer has been fantastic. From start to finish, our weekly meetings with the guys at the Layer, they're always there to take any questions that we have. They're open to listening to any suggestions that we have. But we also get regular feedback from the Layer, in terms of any updates or any incoming upgrades to the system. We definitely see the Layer as a key partner of Unified World going forward, and we would definitely recommend them to any partner who work within telecoms, who are looking for a system that incorporates different departments all in one place.