CVUK

CVUK specialises in recruitment services for the U.K.’s retail sector, helping to provide a stream of quality personnel to fill vacancies from the sales floor to the boardroom. Providing this essential service to a booming sector has led to rapid expansion for CVUK since it started up in 2003; it now has offices across the U.K.

“Competition for the best people in retail remains as hot as ever. To help manage this difficult process, many major retail names use us as their only supplier of recruitment services.”
- Vanessa Elias, Managing Director, CVUK.

As part of its continual effort to improve customer satisfaction, CVUK decided late in 2006 to replace its phone system. The old system was reaching the limits of expandability. The firm sought a scalable replacement that could be installed in the London office, and then rolled out in other locations. Along with better call management and greater ease of use than that offered by the current system, a top priority for the new system was that it integrated with Candidate Plus, a software suite for recruitment consultancies in use throughout CVUK’s operations.

“As well as enhancing and unifying our communications, we had the perhaps unusual requirement of wanting to take existing phones off the desk. Having a clear, tidy desk is important to me, and it’s important in this business to give the right impression to people we talk to.”
- Vanessa Elias, Managing Director, CVUK.

Impressed with ShoreTel’s ability to integrate seamlessly with Candidate Plus software, as well as its ease of use and low overall cost of ownership, CVUK deployed a system featuring the ShoreTel 120 Voice Switch, which accommodates up to 120 IP phones, softphones, and other IP endpoints. Three administrative personnel use ShoreTel 212k IP Phones, which are designed for small businesses and yet have all the features of a larger telephone system. Employee productivity and mobility are increased with ShoreTel’s Softphone desktop utility, which allows employees to make or receive calls on their desktop or laptop PC regardless of location. Other benefits include:

• Significant time and cost savings achieved as IT staff can maintain the system with the Web-based interface of ShoreTel Director — making all moves, adds, and changes in-house, and in minutes.
• Productivity-enhancing unified communications features such as dial-by-name have gone a long way toward ensuring a high level of adoption of the ShoreTel SoftPhone by CVUK’s staff.
• The system integrates seamlessly with Candidate Plus. Simply by clicking on a candidate’s name, CVUK staff can dial them as well as bring up their record on-screen.

“Candidate Plus has been central to the operations of CVUK since we started. A key reason ShoreTel was picked ahead of other vendors was the ease with which it integrates with other applications.”
- Vanessa Elias, Managing Director, CVUK.