Smiths Group saves millions thanks to AT&T WAN

Common communications infrastructure delivers videoconferencing and VoIP to 23,000 employees worldwide

UK-based technology firm Smiths Group has said its £94.5m deal with telecoms provider AT&T, signed in December last year, will save it millions of pounds a year.

Under the deal, AT&T has implemented a wide area network (WAN) capable of handling videoconferencing and voice over IP traffic, with more unified communications rollouts planned further down the line.

Smiths Group CIO Brian Jones said the structure of the deal has enabled the company to save millions of pounds a year.

"Historically, each of our five divisions worked at a point-to-point level with telecoms, meaning that actually the service was inadequate across the board. AT&T was able to provide us with an enterprise-wide agreement," he added.

Smiths Group has five divisions all serving very distinct markets, and its products range from technologies that support explosive and threat detection to IVF treatment.

The deal with AT&T has seen the implementation of a common communications infrastructure across all its operations and business units, supporting 23,000 employees across 300 global locations.

"As a result of the WAN deployment we have been able to accomplish tasks far more efficiently. We use a lot of videoconferencing and are increasingly using VoiP," said Jones.

"We are currently discussing the implementation of telepresence systems. We are interested in this and it is quite exciting for the group," he added.

Jones said the deal has delivered benefits beyond lower costs.

"The savings delivered by the network and communications platform are great, but the interesting thing is what it leads to," he said.

"Our procurement programme is a good example. Our divisions were all working in isolation, and as a group our external spend goes into nine figures. However, no single group was able to leverage the economies of scale that they can now," he added.

"Before we implemented the WAN, we were told that there were no suppliers that deal with more than one division. After it was implemented we realised that there were more than 15,000 companies supplying more than one division, and we found 60 that supplied all of them! This is incredible when you think we spend at least £1m for each supplier.

"Now we have a group-wide approach to the buying categories, this isn't an issue for us anymore."