For over 160 years, Brinks, Inc. has constructed a world empire by shifting high-value belongings with zero margin for error.
Whereas its bodily infrastructure is famously impenetrable, the corporate’s legacy communications not too long ago confronted a distinctly fashionable problem. Brinks urgently wanted emigrate over 220 North American branches to the cloud, and so they needed to execute this with out dropping a single mission-critical name.
Sustaining an on-premises Cisco Unified Communications Supervisor (UCM) had grow to be a burden. Managing this technique for over 4,000 customers was more and more advanced and resource-intensive. On the identical time, Brinks processed roughly 150,000 to 190,000 calls month-to-month throughout the Americas. Due to this large quantity, the enterprise required a communication community as resilient as its fleet of armored vans.
The answer was a fast, full-scale migration to Cisco Webex Calling, which the group rolled out throughout the Americas in below 60 days.
The Heavy Elevate: Migrating Legacy UCM to the Cloud
Shifting massive enterprise estates from legacy on-premises platforms into the cloud is a infamous hurdle for international organizations. For Brinks, the outdated infrastructure demanded substantial {hardware} deployments at each single web site. Handbook configuration additionally consumed helpful IT sources and slowed response occasions.
“Shifting from on-prem name supervisor into the Webex surroundings was an enormous problem for us at Brinks as a result of we had to determine a approach to migrate all 220 branches from an on-prem resolution into the cloud,” recalled Paul Brookshire, Sr. VoIP Engineer at Brinks.
“Our fundamental concern was how can we migrate over 220 branches with out affecting the client and our finish customers?”
To make sure absolute continuity, the IT group established a SIP trunk to attach its legacy programs straight with the cloud. This strategic transfer offered a single port for over 10,000 Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers, enabling a extremely managed, branch-by-branch migration schedule. By taking this phased method, Brinks efficiently bypassed the rising pains of a large cloud transition.
A Single Pane of Glass for a Single Engineer
The true ROI of this migration is probably greatest illustrated by the executive effectivity it unlocked for the Brinks IT division. Right this moment, the corporate manages its huge community of customers and endpoints by Cisco’s Webex Management Hub.
For Brookshire, the platform’s centralized administration capabilities have been transformative:
“The tangible outcome was Brinks having the ability to handle all of our branches from a single pane of glass.”
“I’m the one voice engineer at Brinks, so having the ability to make the most of that single pane of glass for the entire branches throughout the Americas is critical for us.”
This newfound agility additionally allowed Brinks to drastically scale back its {hardware} footprint. After rolling out the Webex softphone software to company and international workplace staff, the corporate eradicated the necessity for bodily desk telephones in these places. As an alternative, they reserved devoted {hardware} solely for mission-critical department environments.
Embracing a Multi-UC Setting
As we steadily cowl right here at UC Right this moment, the fashionable enterprise hardly ever operates inside a single vendor ecosystem. Brinks isn’t any exception to this pattern. Recognizing that its distributed workforce wanted to collaborate seamlessly, the corporate prioritized interoperability to assist a real multi-UC surroundings.
To bridge the platform hole, Brinks leveraged Cisco Boards alongside integration licenses, enabling native, frictionless conferences between Microsoft Groups and Cisco {hardware}.
“The mixing Cisco and Microsoft Groups has partnered with has allowed for a a lot smoother expertise throughout conferences,” Brookshire famous.
Wanting Forward: AI Receptionists and World Scale
With the foundational migration full, Brinks is already wanting towards the way forward for buyer expertise and operational effectivity. Presently, each inbound name routes by an auto-attendant system, which has yielded extremely optimistic suggestions. The corporate plans to raise this expertise by deploying AI-powered receptionists within the close to future.
“The shopper suggestions has been very optimistic, and we’re seeking to implement AI receptionists to assist improve the client expertise,” Brookshire shared, including that he stays open to implementing new AI use circumstances and analytics instruments as they emerge.
Wanting on the larger image, the scalability of Webex Calling is a large operational benefit. As Brinks continues to develop by buying or merging new branches, the communications rollout course of is virtually plug-and-play.
For a company constructed completely on reliability and belief, this modernization proves that safety and agility can go hand-in-hand.
As Brookshire summarized: “Utilizing Webex Calling and Management Hub has been a sport changer for Brinks. It has allowed us to simply deploy and set up new places by utilizing a single pane of glass, which has nearly allowed us to handle all of our endpoints and customers a lot simpler.”
