CPL Resources

CPL Resources, founded in 1989, is Ireland’s largest recruitment and HR solutions organisation, operating on a national basis through offices in Dublin, Kildare, Westmeath, Limerick, Cork, and Galway. The company is currently Ireland’s largest employer of temporary and contract staff, placing 20,000 temporary and contract candidates every year. Reliable and quality communications are critical to the success of this growing recruitment solutions organization.

“We had two Toshiba Strata digital PBX systems which were becoming expensive to maintain, primarily as there was little support available for them. We needed to find a new phone system which not only worked across all our offices but was also simple to manage.”
- Brona Kernan, IT Director, CPL.

CPL’s main office in Dublin is spread across four buildings. Some of these buildings are connected via a wireless network and others use metro fibre. CPL had a separate PBX in each building, which translated to a high maintenance overhead as well as costly toll charges for calls between the offices being routed via the public phone system. Since the existing PBXs were reaching end of life and were in need of replacement, CPL seized the opportunity to look for a better solution. Reliability and advanced functionality were key criteria in the company’s search.

“Nearly all the other solutions we looked at carried a lot of PBX baggage, which is really limiting. Conversely, as a pure IP system, ShoreTel was so much more flexible and efficient — it is truly next-generation.”
- Brona Kernan, IT, Director, CPL.

Following a trial of a ShoreTel UC system in one office, CPL rolled the system out to the rest of the Dublin offices. With the server hardware already installed, the transition to ShoreTel was completed in just one morning; it was simply a case of adding ShoreTel Voice Switches and phones throughout the headquarters where required. The system comprises four ShoreTel 220 E1 Voice Switches connected to 250 ShoreTel 230 IP Phones. All the CPL offices are on a single, unified system, replacing the need for multiple PBXs, voicemail systems, automated attendants, and Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems. Other benefits include:

• Significant cost savings and efficiency gains have been achieved by eliminating multiple PBXs and consolidating separate sites onto a single, unified platform.
• System management has been simplified and maintenance can be carried out in-house, saving on costly service contracts.
• CPL realized a 20 percent savings on calls to mobiles by routing calls from each site through a mobile phone CorPorate Network (CPN) microcell located at headquarters.
• Integration with Microsoft Exchange enables staff to work efficiently using ShoreTel Call Manager to find colleagues and to log all inbound and outbound communications.

“CPL’s ShoreTel UC system has been a resounding success. We are working closely with ShoreTel to leverage the system to empower additional competitive advantages for the CPL organization.”
- Brona Kernan, IT, Director, CPL.