EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ChallengeAdvertising is all about using effective communication and groundbreaking techniques to deliver clear, compelling messages. But BBDO Germany, a group of eight ad agencies within Publicis Omnicom, the world’s biggest advertising group, was relying on a phone system more than a decade old and poorly integrated. As a result, the company had to depend on a range of vendors to keep the system going, since even the voicemail service was provided by a third party.

The challenge was becoming more difficult as an increasing proportion of the voice estate reached end-of-life and spare parts became harder to find. Although the system provided a reliable voice service, it was difficult and time consuming to maintain and was unable to offer more advanced collaborative services. Handsets had to be manually configured for each new joiner or desk move, and setting up an office in a new location was a problem.

“With the old system, it could take weeks to get comms up and running,” says Martin Bandze, head of IT at BBDO Services, the Dusseldorf-based company charged with delivering IT infrastructure across the German agency network. “But, in an agency you have to do things in hours. Flexibility is crucially important.” BBDO had five people dedicated almost exclusively to managing the phone system, and when one of them was away, the team was stretched. “We wanted one central system for the offices,” Bandze adds.

SolutionAlready using Cisco® technologies in its Wi-Fi infrastructure and network perimeter, BBDO Germany moved to a FlexPod integrated data center infrastructure built on the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS®) and Nexus® Switches with NetApp fiber-attached storage.

Customer Case StudyAd Network Improves Time to Market and Lowers Cost

BBDO Germany sets up new locations 10 times faster, while reducing comms cost-per-desk by 25 percent

Customer Name: BBDO Services

Industry: Advertising

Location: Germany

Number of Employees: 2800

Challenge•Improve communications company-wide

•Reduce cost and time to market

•Enhance productivity

Solution•Cisco Collaboration Architecture, featuring Cisco Jabber, Unified Communications, and WebEx

Results•Reduced new office communications setup times by factor of 10

•Helped decrease dedicated IT resources by 70 percent

•Lowered internal call costs by 30 percent

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Customer Case Study

Having enjoyed a good experience, BBDO opted to compare the Cisco Collaboration portfolio to that offered by its existing vendor. Ultimately, the decision to go with Cisco was based on a combination of technical and total cost of ownership considerations. BBDO put together a business case analyzing the five-year costs of each solution, including wide-ranging operational expenditure factors such as the number of employees needed for maintenance.

“We chose Cisco because of price and functionality,” Bandze says. “Cisco offered a high level of integration, whereas our previous vendor had bought one software company after another and had not integrated their products completely. This meant that its softphones did not work with older versions, for example.”

The new Cisco collaboration infrastructure is based on a Cisco Unified Communications Manager cluster, forming a delivery platform for services such as session management, voice, video, messaging, mobility, and web conferencing. This foundation serves 3000 endpoints for around 2800 users, spread across four agency networks and 12 offices in 10 locations.

Separately, the BBDO outdoor advertising subsidiary, OMG Outdoor, deployed Cisco WebEx® and integrated it with Microsoft Active Directory. The cloud-based solution is used extensively for web conferencing, with around 1200 users appreciating the ability to share desktops, high-definition (HD) video, files, and applications with colleagues and clients.

One of the most significant elements within the communications mix has been the implementation of Cisco Jabber®, which BBDO selected as its softphone client of choice. Jabber lets staff access presence, instant messaging, voice, video, voice messaging, desktop sharing, and conferencing from a single interface that can be installed on any device. It has been implemented on each company workstation in Germany, including about 800 Apple Mac desktops, and on approximately 400 mobile devices, most of which are iPhones.

Cisco Jabber and WebEx have been integrated with Active Directory, synchronizing users’ contact lookup details with real time presence information. The installation and integration were delivered by collaboration experts and Cisco Global Certified Partner, Dimension Data.

ResultsBBDO employees rely heavily on voice communications and were not yet major users of unified communications tools such as video or instant messaging. Accordingly, most agency users had handsets with prescribed functionality, and the desk phone was not generally seen as a major productivity-enhancing tool. But it’s a different story with Jabber.

Previously, whenever a staff member moved to a new temporary location, the first thing they usually had to do was log in and send emails notifying colleagues of the nearest extension they could be contacted on. With Jabber, they can get to work straightaway. “This has transformed communications across the business,” says Bandze.

Jabber may not have reduced travel costs much, since ad execs still need to spend time with clients or on location, but it has certainly helped employees to be more productive. “The Cisco solution offers single-number reach, but it’s Jabber that really made a great step forward,” says Bandze. “Today, everyone uses the Jabber client on their smartphone, so they’re reachable wherever they are.” In fact, Jabber has become so entrenched in the company culture that nearly 100 employees have taken the unusual step of asking to have their desk phones taken away, because those endpoints are no longer needed.

© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 3

“The Cisco solution offers single-number reach, but it’s Jabber that really made a great step forward. Today, everyone uses the Jabber client on their smartphone, so they’re reachable wherever they are.”

Martin BandzeHead of ITBBDO Services

The flexibility that Jabber provides was dramatically illustrated when a team of 10 from the BBDO public relations agency network, Ketchum Pleon, was sent on an assignment to Kazakhstan. The agency gave just three-days’ notice of its communications needs. “In the event it took only three or four hours to set them up,” Bandze says. “We installed Jabber on their laptops and away they went.”

The time needed to connect up a new office has dropped from weeks to days because the Cisco equipment is essentially ready to use, whereas previously new systems would have had to be ordered and installed. Bandze says: “With the new setup, it’s around 10 times faster. Before, it was a week or more just to get a scheduled onsite date and then a person had to set up the system. Now, we send a ticket to Dimension Data, and in two days it’s done.”

Along the way, the reduced need for telecommunications infrastructure has helped reduce the communications cost-per-desk by 25 percent. At the same time, the company’s phone bill has fallen by 30 percent, because internal calls are now routed for free over the internal Cisco based network. Meanwhile, the number of people needed to look after telephony has dropped from five to one-and-a-half, a 70 percent reduction, freeing up resources for higher-value activities. This reduction is partly due to the fact that the systems are now operated by Dimension Data, as a managed service. BBDO is clearly seeing benefits from having one system from a single vendor.

Going forward, BBDO is considering deployment of Cisco TelePresence, integrated with WebEx to help drive greater productivity.

Customer Case Study

“Cisco offered a high level of integration, whereas our previous vendor had bought one software company after another and had not integrated their products completely.”

Martin BandzeHead of ITBBDO Services

For More InformationTo learn more about the Cisco architectures and solutions featured in this case study, go to:www.cisco.com/go/collaboration

Product List

Collaboration • Cisco Unified Communications Manager Version 8.6 • Cisco Jabber • Cisco WebEx

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