 | 2007 | | | Migration to IP | | | Aastra MX-ONE | | | Europe | | | Sweden |
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The Swedish Trade Council is a vital resource for Swedish businesses which trade internationally. The organization provides business development consultancy on a case-by-case basis, ranging from pilot studies and market surveys to promotion of Swedish products and services.
With a turnover of about SEK 500 million (US$ 71.4 million), the organization currently has 55 offices in over 40 countries and a further 22 regional offices in Sweden. It has around 500 employees, of which 380 work abroad, 100 in the Swedish capital Stockholm and 22 in the rest of Sweden. The council is jointly owned by the Swedish government and Swedish industry.
When the council began planning the relocation of its head office to new premises within Stockholm, maintaining effective telecommunications was critical. As part of the relocation, the Swedish Trade Council required an IP telephony solution to connect all the organization’s offices throughout the world with the Swedish headquarters. The Ericsson MX-ONE IP-PBX was selected.
The vision for telecommunications was that the same system would be able to link the new head office at the World Trade Center in Stockholm with all regional and international offices. Robert Andersson, IT Manager, Swedish Trade Council, explains the process which led to the organization selecting Ericsson: “We researched several exchange systems and solutions, but finally opted for Ericsson and IP telephony. When it comes to IP telephony, there are not many quality providers on the market to choose from.”
The new MX-ONE IP-PBX for the council’s head office was installed in early June 2006. Since the introduction of IP telephony, major savings have been made in the costs of calls. This has been most apparent in Stockholm, but the organization has also seen cost reductions regionally as well.
The Swedish Trade Council is now planning to introduce IP telephony at all its offices around the world, a plan which will take several years to implement. Initially, all the major offices will have their own MX-ONE IP-PBX, followed gradually by the smaller offices.
The council also plans to introduce MS Live Communication Server integrated with MX-ONE and Ericsson Corporate Telephony to allow council employees to see who is online at any given time, and make calls from Microsoft Outlook. Robert Andersson sums up the benefits of this addition: “This means the contact distance between personnel in our offices around the world is shorter, simplifying our global communications considerably.”
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