HMV Case Study Case Study
The Client
With a high street presence dating back over 100 years, HMV is one of the UK’s most recognisable and loved retail brands.
It was acquired in 2019 by Sunrise Records & Entertainment which has grown its retail estate to embrace 111 entertainment and music stores trading under the HMV and Fopp brands. These are supported by head offices in Solihull and London and a warehouse sited beneath its flagship HMV Vault store in Birmingham.
Business Needs
When Sunrise acquired HMV, it inherited a legacy telephony system comprising a variety of on-premise PBXs fed by standard, PSTN and ISDN lines.
“Following the change of ownership, we reviewed all our IT costs and the one that stood out was telephony,” explains technical services manager Rich Hanlon.
“We saw there was a real opportunity to not only secure cost savings but significant improvements in functionality.”
The existing infrastructure not only gobbled up case, but time. “We didn’t have direct control over the PBXs so when it came to configuration changes, be it extensions, remaps or handset functionality, and engineer would need to visit.”
Rich turned first to HMV’s incumbent supplier and other technology partners before being introduced to Avoira by his technical architect who had previously worked with the company on a similar project at Waterstones.
The Solution
The Avoira team specified an IP telephone system, connected via HMV’s existing dual data connections. This would enable centralisation of lines hosted via HMV’s data centres whilst an inclusive minutes package would eliminate call charges.
For HMV’s stores we recommended Yealink T19P E2 handsets which Rich praised as “cost-effective handsets which we could deploy in large numbers without breaking the bank.”
We further specified T46S models for office and reception use, high-end colour screened T54W units for directors and departmental heads and CP920 VoIP conference phones for head office communications.
With major cost savings being coupled with enhanced security, increased resilience, greater flexibility and a rapid return on investment, it proved a compelling proposition.
Having green-lighted our solution, Rich found himself equally impressed with our engineering expertise and service standards. “Avoira’s engineers were available whenever we needed them and worked closely with my team to ensure seamless deployment.”
The Benefits
HMV’s first and highest priority was more than met, with massive savings being delivered each year.
“Over our five-year agreement with Avoira we will benefit from significant savings on the previous solution and solutions offered by competitors,” confirms Rich.
He adds: “Having every store within a single, central PBX is really useful. It makes configuration changes on-the-fly possible. They can be done in a matter of minutes which removed the cost of a physical visit and the necessary lead-time to deploy changes.”
This also enhances business continuity, “We’ve easily and quickly able to divert calls, to turn solutions off and on when required.”
Rich also praises our ability to determine and meet requirements. “From the start, Avoira have understood what we were looking for and that meant that deployment was seamless.
It was really good.”
