Akkadian Provisioning Manager
Case Study

Cisco UC Provisioning Software Helps Design Firm Leo A Daly

Since 1915, Leo A Daly has been providing designs for architecture, engineering, interiors, and many other planning services. In the past century, the company has developed an impressive reputation. Now, internationally recognized for its work, Leo A Daly has 34 offices around the globe.  

Migration from a Legacy PBX System to Cisco Unified Communications Manager

The company recently found itself with a challenge as the voice environment was operating on two different platforms, an older, end-of-life PBX system and a Cisco Collaboration system. The company decided to migrate all 800 users to one, updated Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM self-provisioning). Additionally, the firm wanted to update its users to newer Cisco Collaboration features. While planning for the upgrade, Leo A Daly’s IT team discovered that the time required to provision each user, device, and application could total 30 minutes-per-user. This inefficient process requiring a lengthy provisioning time was not an option for the company. With over 800 employees to migrate to CUCM, the provisioning process would have consumed 400 hours of staff time. This meant the migration would consume a full-time employee’s work week for approximately ten weeks. Although the end product of the CUCM migration would offer the company much value, the IT team could see that the migration project was on track to tie-up the IT staff, keeping them away from more important tasks.

Software Offers Provisioning Efficiency and Collaboration Adoption

As the legacy system was end-of-life, Leo A Daly needed the migration team to upgrade and deploy as quickly as possible. The company found a solution to their provisioning dilemma when they were introduced to Akkadian Provisioning Manager™ from Akkadian Labs. For Leo A Daly, the decision to use Akkadian software for its migration needs, primarily came down to efficiency. Tim Milan, an Information Technology Specialist with Leo A Daly, was part of the team that helped purchase and deploy Akkadian Provisioning Manager. “What we like best is Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s ease of use. It auto-fills everything— you add extension and user ID and everything else fills in. Creating templates was very easy.” Tim Milan, Information Technology Specialist, Leo A Daly. Using Akkadian Provisioning Manager, the IT team at Leo A Daly was able to reduce the time to provision from 30 minutes per user down to just five seconds per user. This time savings was all it took for management to see the value in Akkadian Provisioning Manager. But for Leo A Daly’s IT professionals, the draw to Akkadian Provisioning Manager was about more than just time. The IT team wanted to expand collaboration offerings to the company’s business units. Utilizing Akkadian Provisioning Manager allowed the team to provision Leo A Daly employees with new collaboration tools, without additional steps. The CUCM migration and upgrade could now include new collaboration technology rollout and adoption.

IT Team Offloads Provisioning to Office Administrative Team

Because the software is so easy to use, it was now possible for less experienced staff to take on provisioning tasks. However, before handing over responsibilities, the IT team needed to protect the business-critical UC environment. The IT staff was able to partition access, and therefore protect their CUCM, allowing the receptionist and office administrator to become provisioners. “The distributed workload frees up the technical staff for higher level tasks,” said Milan. For Leo A Daly, the ROI was clear. Not only did the company save hundreds of hours on provisioning, it also increased its access to new Cisco Collaboration applications.

Akkadian Labs Support and Software Stand Out

On working with Akkadian Labs, Milan had this to say:

“The support we received from Akkadian Labs was awesome. The support team was quick to reply and had great answers.”

Milan was thankful for the recommendation to use Akkadian software that he received from the company’s Cisco Collaboration partner. That one recommendation led to an effective transition, one that has satisfied Leo A Daly’s business unit users, as well as the company’s IT professionals. Like Leo A Daly, small, medium, and large businesses utilizing Akkadian Provisioning Manager have seen noticeable improvements on time spent account provisioning. These companies see their IT staff spending time on other projects, leading to a sizable return on investment.