Thame, Oxon, UK:  13 October 2011 – As a result of switching its audio conferencing service provider to MeetingZone, Countrywide has saved thousands of pounds on its previous conferencing call charges in the first year of deployment. Countrywide is the UK's largest and most successful estate agency and property services Group with around 1,300 associated branches across England, Scotland and Wales.

"We chose MeetingZone as our new audio conferencing provider because it offered a very flexible pricing structure, a secure service, a dedicated account manager and, compared to some of its perceived competitors, gave me complete confidence that it would deliver what it promised," said Colin Tigg, Countrywide's IT Procurement Manager.
Countrywide Logo
Countrywide Logo

"Many of our conference call participants need to dial in from their mobile phone, which was proving expensive for us," Tigg continued. "MeetingZone was able to provide us with local dial in numbers and this capability has played a big part in helping us to make substantial cost savings."

Countrywide's previous supplier provided invoices in the traditional paper format. This increased the total cost of audio conferencing for Countrywide as administrative resource was needed to manually work through each invoice to correctly allocate conference call costs.

"MeetingZone allows us to allocate cost centres against individual users through its online billing system. This is a big plus for us," added Tigg. "MeetingZone's online invoices automatically separate the costs across our various cost centres. We are presented with a ready-made report that makes re-charging conferencing costs extremely quick and easy."

Another concern for Countrywide was the security of its conference calls. MeetingZone's security features which were of particular importance to Countrywide included the ability to: invalidate users' individual PIN numbers should they leave the Group, generate new PIN numbers on a regular basis ensuring that unauthorised participants are prevented from joining conferences and obtaining access to sensitive data and lock conference calls once all the authorised participants have joined.

Countrywide uses audio conferencing extensively across the Group, from senior executives holding their weekly management meetings across the six operating divisions, the IT team conducting project meetings, IT field engineers having their daily call to determine who will be doing what and where, technical training sessions on system changes or updates, to general team meetings across all areas of the business.

“MeetingZone's solution, its customer service team and our designated account manager have indeed delivered what was promised," concluded Tigg.