Leading UK and European sales agency, CPM, is deploying MeetingZone’s cost effective audio conferencing services to reduce conferencing costs, lower operating costs and to continue to cut its carbon emissions.

“By streamlining our conferencing capabilities in the UK to just one provider, MeetingZone, we have managed to significantly reduce our overall conferencing costs, lower operating costs, minimise the environmental impact associated with our business travel and at the same time, cut the administration costs associated with the time and resource needed to manage four different suppliers,” explained Andy Luckett, Group Network and Telecoms Manager for CPM.

For more than two years CPM has been using audio conferencing services from several providers.  However, following a recent review, MeetingZone was chosen as its preferred supplier based on its ability to deliver a cost effective, flexible and easy to use solution.  Another key factor in MeetingZone’s selection was its advanced customer service portal providing transparent and flexible billing, allowing CPM to quickly and easily allocate conferencing costs to the correct cost centre and manage users.

“All of our conference calls are internally cross charged and so accurate cost allocation is key. With other providers’ billing systems, we had to go through users’ calendars to determine who had participated in what audio conference call, and then ask them to confirm attendance. This was an archaic costly process, both in terms of time and resource,” explained Luckett.

MeetingZone’s billing system automatically allocates conference call costs to cost centres associated with the individual PIN of CPM’s frequent audio conferencing users who hold MeetingZone accounts. Users who are not account holders book their conference calls with the CPM receptionist via MeetingZone’s CityDesk, an instant online conference scheduler.  CityDesk, which has been specifically designed for organisations which have a requirement to book audio conferences centrally and need to allocate cost centre codes for conference calls, is the ideal solution for organisations who offer professional services.

Audio conferencing plays an important role in CPM’s UK Environmental Policy. “One of our key aims is to minimise our carbon emissions and by reducing unnecessary business travel through conferencing we are able to achieve this,” added Luckett. CPM’s environmental management system has been developed to comply with the requirements of both ISO 9001 quality management system and ISO 14001 environmental management system standards.

Available to all employees, audio conferencing is used throughout CPM in the UK, for every type of business meeting including virtual meetings with clients.   

CPM is currently looking at extending its collaboration capabilities and is piloting MeetingZone’s web conferencing solutions. 

“CPM is very much a people business and we will always continue to hold face-to-face meetings.  But we are planning to drive the use of conferencing and collaboration across the organisation to enable us to reap the business benefits that these technologies deliver,” said Luckett.

“The high level of customer service delivered via MeetingZone’s account management team will enable us to continue the smooth roll out of its services.  If you are looking at deploying conferencing and collaboration solutions it is important to choose your supplier carefully.  Excellent account management is crucial as suppliers should, like MeetingZone, deliver so much more than simply a conference bridging number,” concluded Luckett.