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The Business
Nexus PR is one of the UK’s leading public relations consultancies working in the consumer, healthcare, education and issues management sectors. The agency has always embraced technology, using it to deliver its award-winning services to clients, and enabling it to work to three key watchwords which sum up the company’s philosophy: insight, challenge and performance.
Public relations is a demanding, highly competitive industry where effective communication with clients is every bit as important as the ability to campaign on their behalf. The right technical communications tools can make a radical difference to performance and Nexus recognised that in order to maintain its competitive edge, the company needed to make some substantial changes to its existing infrastructure.
The Challenge
Nexus’ IT Manager appointed Fabric Technologies to carry out a detailed technical evaluation of their systems across the board, beginning with their PCs and servers – the machines used every day for email communication, data storage and retrieval , internet use and administration. With an office relocation planned for the following year, Nexus also asked Fabric to look at the costs, practicalities and logistics of moving their existing PBX telephone network and also to explore alternative options. Keen to increase their online visibility by attracting more visitors to their website, Nexus asked Fabric’s web-development division – Interface – to undertake an ongoing programme of search engine optimisation.
The Solutions
Phase 1 of the project saw the retirement of Nexus’ existing servers and PCs and the deployment of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Through this, everyone at Nexus can communicate and collaborate easily, improving efficiently and productivity. The new system was designed to provide easy access to business-critical information and as a result, hundreds of hours a month have been saved.
With the new data network in place, Fabric moved on to the second phase – analysing the practicalities of re-locating Nexus’ elderly PBX telephone system. Fabric concluded that the cost of relocation was actually greater than the cost of deploying a new system and recommended an IP based Cisco Unified Communications network. The new state-of-the-art network had considerable benefits over the system it was replacing, including greater levels of security, a reduced carbon footprint and reduced call costs. But arguably the biggest benefit was improved flexibility for users – the ability for people at Nexus to communicate in the way they prefer: via voice, email, fax or instant messaging, using an office phone, mobile or PC. And by enabling users to communicate from wherever they are, responsiveness to clients has also been significantly improved.
Throughout both phases of the project, it was imperative that Fabric kept disruption to business down to an absolute minimum. This was achieved with careful, astute planning and adherence to Prince 2 project management methodology. Says Nexus Chairman, Jonathan Choat:
“During this time Fabric’s IT support was excellent. They came in after hours and weekends to ensure the business ran as usual during the day and indeed everything did work to plan, with practically no glitches.”
With the new infrastructure in place, it was now over to Fabric’s web experts-Interface – to begin optimising Nexus’ website, ensuring it appears in a prominent position within search engine listings. Interface also recommended the use of dedicated web analytics and metric software in order to provide accountability and a means of gauging the effectiveness of regular editorial reviews and copy updates. This is an ongoing programme with work continuing over a period of 12 months. Jonathan Choat comments:
“We have been reconfiguring and reorganising our website as well as that of our International Association in order to optimise their places in search engine listings. Again this has been simply done with the minimum drama – even when we dropped behind the agreed schedule for completing the work from our end. Now Fabric are reporting regularly on site search positions and recommended changes to improve our ratings and this will continue over a year’s programme.”
Business Value
Excellent communications, both internally and with clients have always played a major part in the success of Nexus PR – they are the essence of what the agency offers.
The new systems designed and deployed by Fabric provide a secure, robust infrastructure that eases communication, improving the company’s productivity and efficiency.
Through Unified Communications, the team at Nexus enjoy a greater flexibility in the way they work and are can be more responsive to clients whilst at the same time operational costs have decreased.
The deployment of the new networks have also been a success on two other levels; internal operations and business processes have become more streamlined and effective and the reduced cabling requirements have enabled Nexus to reduce its carbon footprint.
The Future
The success of the projects has been such that Nexus have now appointed Fabric to take care of their day-to-day support requirements, looking after users and providing assistance with all things IT related.
Such has been the success of Interface’s web development and optimisation, Nexus are now actively recommending them to their own clients and contacts, including the International Public Relations Network – an influential industry umbrella group to which Nexus belong.
Jonathan Choat concludes:
“I am sure Fabric will maintain their reputation of cool hands, committed to getting it right quickly and always being easy and responsive to get on with and work with.”
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