With offices and customer sites across the UK, Kingdom Services Group had been looking for a video conferencing solution to reduce the travel associated with board meetings. As soon as it installed Avaya Meetings video conferencing, it realized there were many more potential uses. Now video is used for client meetings, internal collaboration and to help it recruit staff around the country rapidly and at low cost.
Having started out in 1993 as a security business, Kingdom has grown rapidly. Today, as well as providing on-site security for organizations from retailers to universities and utilities, it offers facilities management, environmental protection to local authorities across the country, as well as a recently added recruitment service capability. The business model means that as well having offices in each region of the UK, Kingdom has staff based at hundreds of customer sites—making effective internal communication crucial. While its voice, mobile and messaging systems were all working smoothly, Kingdom had identified a gap.
“We have regular board and senior management meetings,” explains Rob Barton, IT and Innovation Director at Kingdom. “Each week, leadership team members were travelling across the country to attend.” Aside from the travel and accommodation costs involved, that was a drain on directors’ time. Video conferencing appeared to offer a solution, but having “dabbled” with some free online systems, Kingdom had found the quality variable. “We wanted a reliable, robust system,” Barton confirms. “We knew we needed one, but hadn’t found a suitable solution.”