Thame, Oxon, UK: 7 June, 2011 – Secure audio conferencing capabilities from MeetingZone were vital to Taylor Wimpey plc during its refinancing exercises, completed in April 2009 and mid-December 2010. 

“Refinancing is a lengthy and sometimes complex process requiring an increase in meetings for members of our corporate team,” explained Alex Naylor, Business Systems Manager for Taylor Wimpey. “Many of these meetings took place via audio conference and security was of paramount importance. MeetingZone could provide a comprehensive solution in this area.”




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The specific security features which were of most importance to Taylor Wimpey were firstly: MeetingZone’s Roll Call functionality which allows the conference host to verify that only authorised participants are present. Using any handset, the host can quickly and easily replay a recording of the name, organisation and other requested details, given by those who have dialled in to join the audio conference, to check for any unauthorised participants.

Secondly, once the participants have all been authenticated, MeetingZone’s solution enables the conference host to ‘lock’ the audio conference to prevent any unauthorised participants joining.

Another key factor in Taylor Wimpey’s selection of MeetingZone, as its preferred conferencing and collaboration service provider, was MeetingZone’s flexible and transparent billing solution. In particular, MeetingZone’s ability to route its bill via Taylor Wimpey’s fixed line telecoms provider so conferencing costs were included as part of the company’s existing monthly telecoms billing process.

“Our existing conferencing services were subject to different call rates across different areas of the business, whereas MeetingZone was able to provide a commercially attractive flat rate,” continued Naylor. “It is also very useful to access our bill via MeetingZone’s conferencing portal so that we can monitor usage at any given time. Several business units are already making use of this capability and in time this will be a real business benefit, enabling us to monitor our conferencing spend across the business.”

MeetingZone’s audio conferencing services have been rolled out across the 30 offices which make up Taylor Wimpey’s UK operations. Full roll out took place following a successful pilot implementation within Taylor Wimpey’s corporate office.

“All of our UK employees have access to MeetingZone’s audio conferencing service and conference calls are used for all types of business meetings. Audio conferencing proved invaluable as an alternative to planned face to face meetings when travel plans were affected by the bad weather at the end of last year,” commented Naylor.

MeetingZone’s audio conferencing service met Taylor Wimpey’s ‘usual suspects’ of requirements from a conferencing solution: easy to use, reliable, cost effective, always available i.e. reservation less and easy to manage.

“The best measure of the success of MeetingZone’s service is that Taylor Wimpey now has a single, easily managed audio conferencing service, with transparent and flexible billing, which helps to improve the efficiency and productivity of our employees across the board,” concluded Naylor.