Gleadell Case Study

Company Profile

Established in 1880, Gleadell Agriculture was one of the first grain merchants in the UK to offer farmers a fully integrated storage and drying solution. Gleadell expanded rapidly to include grain merchanting, warehousing, malting and animal feed manufacturing.

Gleadell Agriculture has consistently expanded its sales of seed and fertiliser alongside its growing grain marketing activities. The company now operates from 5 offices in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Wiltshire. Gleadell is the UK’s third largest ex farm buyer of cereals and their network of offices enables them to offer a first class service to farmers and consumers in the main cropping areas of the UK. The company remains a leading exporter of cereals, pulses and oilseed to buyers around the world and is also the market leader in the supply of organic grain to UK processors.

The Reason for Change

With offices throughout the UK, it was important for Gleadell to have a comprehensive communications system so that their offices could communicate as effectively and efficiently as possible. The company had previously used BT Fusion at the head office location but this product was discontinued. The alternative BT offered was a Nortel BCM system, but Gleadell quickly found that this did not meet their full requirements and problems were frequently arising. Calls were being missed, potential customers were being lost, existing customers had to try repeatedly to get through to the right person and there was no voicemail functionality within the system so messages could not even be left for the correct person. The system was not user friendly and did not integrate well with other systems.

The Solution

After carefully considering multiple digital telephony solutions, Gleadell implemented Avaya IP 500 at all five sites, with a total of 70 users. They felt that Avaya IP 500 was a good system with a reasonable price and best met the criteria they had for their business’ telephone system. The system gave them the ability to easily integrate their five sites together, and was a future proof investment.

Benefits

Gleadell were impressed by the functionality and scalability of Avaya IP 500, especially because the system allowed them to add offices and users as they need them- Avaya IP 500 would grow with their business. The main advantage was the ability to integrate all 5 offices through a single phone system. The hot desk function allows users to log into a phone anywhere in the country and be contacted through their own extension number. Other advantages include ease of use and the ability to integrate Avaya IP 500 with Microsoft Outlook allowing users to keep contacts in and dial from their email system.

The Future

All in all, Gleadell feel that the investment they made in Avaya IP 500 was a very wise one. It has already saved them money by greatly improving their call handling process, and it will continue to save them money in to the future as the rest of their system expands.

Jason Martin, IT Manager:

We felt that Avaya IP 500 best met our needs, particularly because we required a system which integrated all five of our UK offices. What’s more we can integrate it to Microsoft Outlook allowing all our contacts to be kept in one place