Addleshaw Goddard reduces audio conferencing costs, improves business efficiencies, and cuts CO₂ emissions with MeetingZone solution

Thame, Oxon, UK: 3 November, 2009: MeetingZone's cost effective audio conferencing solution is enabling UK law firm, Addleshaw Goddard, to enhance business efficiencies through timely and accurate management of conferencing costs. Conferencing is also ensuring that Addleshaw Goddard operates in accordance with its environmental policy by cutting CO₂ emissions.

"We needed to replace our existing audio conferencing service with a cost effective, high quality solution that would provide a scalable platform to meet our rapidly increasing demands for conferencing," explained Dan Simms, Head of Technical Solutions for Addleshaw Goddard.

"Crucially, we also needed the facility to promptly manage the recovery of conferencing costs against individual department, client and matter numbers. This capability was very difficult with our previous supplier and was becoming ever more important with the growing demand for conferencing services. There is increasing recognition that conferencing is a perfect business communications tool to help Addleshaw Goddard meet its green corporate responsibility commitment by reducing CO₂ emissions through the reduction of business travel," added Simms.

After a comprehensive procurement exercise, Addleshaw Goddard chose MeetingZone as its preferred supplier. "It was very quickly evident that MeetingZone has an extremely positive ethos around meeting its client's conferencing requirements," continued Simms. "There is no reference to ‘we can't do this'. Instead the response has always been ‘we will work with you to get this done.' This approach is unusual as few service providers place as much focus on delivering such high levels of customer service."

In order to provide Addleshaw Goddard with a fast and efficient cost recovery process, MeetingZone designed a bespoke solution by tailoring its existing post call e-mail, which shows connection details, to include the total cost of the conference. The e-mail now also contains a prompt for the conference host to provide a client and matter number to which the cost should be invoiced. Only valid client and matter numbers can be provided. This post call e-mail arrives in the conference host's inbox within five minutes of the call ending and allows conference costs to be quickly and easily allocated and invoiced to the correct client.

Additionally, MeetingZone was able to deliver daily billing to Addleshaw Goddard. This functionality was important as the previous supplier had only offered monthly billing, which had been problematic. Monthly billing had led to delays in the allocation of conferencing charges to client invoices, and often charges would ‘miss the boat' as matters would be closed by the time conference charges were processed.

"Another key requirement was that our conferencing provider was able to integrate its billing system with Addleshaw Goddard's Practice Management System. MeetingZone was again able to achieve this by uploading invoice data automatically on a daily basis. This ‘automatic load file' saves our Accounts Payable Team valuable time by eradicating the lengthy and arduous task of manual line by line data entry," commented Simms.

Audio conferencing is used by Addleshaw Goddard's partners and fee earners, for all internal business meetings, inter office meetings between the three office locations, updates with clients and for negotiations with suppliers. MeetingZone's solution delivers a cost effective way of holding conference calls which require a larger number of participants than can be supported by the in-house conferencing system, or for calls that are conducted off site.

"MeetingZone has helped us to considerably reduce our audio conferencing costs by providing us with an easy to use and viable alternative to our in house capability, offering a competitive pricing structure, and enabling us to quickly and easily recover client related conferencing costs," concluded Simms. "MeetingZone replaced an already existing conferencing service, the complete absence of any demand for a return to the old system could, therefore, be considered as the best measure of its success!"

About Addleshaw Goddard
Addleshaw Goddard is the law firm that enables its clients and people to succeed and flourish. Built on a culture that is committed to delivering the best advice, all the time, every time, clients and staff benefit from the extraordinary effort Addleshaw Goddard invests in its relationships. The firm is uncompromising in its commitment to quality in everything it does, and focused on creating sustainable value for its clients, people and communities.

The insight gained through understanding what really matters to clients and their businesses, together with the technical expertise and valuable experience of its own people, enables Addleshaw Goddard to identify the best course of action for clients to achieve their business objectives.

The firm fields quality professionals where and when needed for a wide range of clients, including significant publicly listed organisations, financial institutions, public sector bodies, successful businesses and private individuals.

Addleshaw Goddard's goal is to be a natural choice for talent and has received a range of high profile independent recognition for its commitment to attracting, retaining and developing great people.

About MeetingZone
MeetingZone is the UK's largest independent conferencing and collaboration service provider and offers customers a high performance, low-cost personalised audio and web conferencing service. With operations in Europe and North America, MeetingZone's HQ is located at Thame, Oxford. The company was formed in 2002 by Steve Gandy and Tim Duffy, who collectively have over 30 years experience in the technology and telecoms sector. MeetingZone's customers include many of the FTSE 500 companies in the financial, retail, IT, pharmaceutical and legal sectors. MeetingZone appeared (Sept 2009) in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 list of the fastest growing technology companies in the private sector. For more information please visit: http://www.meetingzone.com/

Contact for MeetingZone
Sarah Chidgey, PR Consultant
sarah@chidgeypr.co.uk
Office: +44 (0) 1672 540996
Mobile: +44 (0) 7795 288302

Jennie Leopard, MeetingZone Ltd
jennie.leopard@meetingzone.com
Office: +44 (0)1844 265500

Further information (external website)