Bird & Bird is an international law firm, with a focus on helping organisations being changed by technology and the digital world. Dating back to 1846, Bird & Bird now have 30 locations around the world, with their London office housing approximately 700 employees.

Purpose of Implementation

In the London office, the remit was to replace an outdated, split estate mobile airtime contract with a more flexible contract option which was also sympathetic to the needs of users.

Case Study

Bird & Bird had recently come to the end of a three-year mobile airtime contract. By the time the contract ended, it was no longer addressing their needs. This can be a common problem with mobile contracts as they take a fairly rigid approach which rarely accommodates for changing requirements, market conditions, user behaviour and technology. As a result, such contracts mean that companies employing them aren’t future-proofed, and find that they do not continue to receive the full value throughout the course of a contract.

The main issue Bird & Bird identified was related to data usage; with users requiring more data than they had available under the existing contract. This resulted in either having to encourage reduced data use or face excess costs, which made controlling costs in a proactive way very challenging.

Users travelling were frustrated at times with any technical restrictions that were in place to help control costs. Bird & Bird’s IT department knew they had to find a solution which enabled a smoother user experience, which was easier to manage.

When it came time to look for new vendors and different more flexible contract solutions, Bird & Bird had a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve. They were looking for a provider who was flexible to work with and wouldn’t just provide them with a contract, leaving them to deal with any potential consequences of overuse. Finding a business who would proactively work alongside them to manage their mobile airtime contract was a must.

A key factor for Bird & Bird when looking for a new provider was a supplier with the ability to manage their split estate – as they had connections on both O2 and Vodafone. Although an estate of split connections provides flexibility for the users, they do require more management, as this scenario often creates its own varying set of challenges around bill processing, support queries, trying to advise end-users, reviewing usage, etc.

By bringing Mobliciti on board to manage their airtime, Bird & Bird were able to retain two separate networks, but they were now delivered on a single contract, single invoice and each connection placed on the same sets of commercial – all supported by the same helpdesk team.  A spokesman explains:

“We wanted someone who could come to us and look at our usage, look at our month-on-month trends, and then could come back and advise us on it.”

Mobliciti’s customer portal was a key part in Bird & Bird’s decision, as it provides an easy-to-use hands-on approach. With a large organisation, swiftly adapting to starters and leavers is essential, and the customer portal gives them the ability to easily swap SIMs to accommodate any fluctuations of staff. The customer portal provides a detailed insight into mobile and data usage, and also allows alerts to be set up related to call spend and data usage. As part of Mobliciti’s Managed Airtime Service [https://mobliciti.com/managed-services/], Mobliciti set up the portal and handled all associated monitoring and alerting – advice could then be proactively given around suitable actions that could be made when such alerts are triggered.

A Seamless Deployment

The transition between the two contracts was seamless for end-users and mobile restrictions have now been relaxed, with Bird & Bird now able to offer a more flexible approach to mobile data for employees. Working alongside Bird & Bird, Mobliciti were able to support their newly introduced tariff with in-month proactive monitoring and alerting, which comes as standard under Mobliciti’s Managed Service. These changes meant that Bird & Bird were able to be aware of, react to and address any exceptional usage in that month.

In addition, Mobliciti now undertakes a monthly consultative review with Bird & Bird. They are carried out to review data, key metrics and usage, with Mobliciti able to advise on how things could be further improved or, in the right circumstances, done differently. This gives the firm the flexibility to evolve in-line with changing requirements and, meaning their mobile airtime will adapt to their future needs and avoid becoming outdated.

Travelling users are more enabled, with Mobliciti now ensuring that employees who are on the move are supplied with automatic data bolt-ons.

By bringing Mobliciti on-board to manage Bird & Bird’s mobile airtime, employees have a greater degree of freedom with their data use, and the business is able to reduce end-user usage controls.  A spokesperson said:

“We had a relationship and there was a level of trust there. The backend team, both on the account and the airtime side are very helpful and very proactive.”

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