DrayTek IP PBX Solution for SmartCredit

About SmartCredit

SmartCredit provides a facility to enable businesses to verify their clients electronically for Anti- Money Laundering (AML) purposes, through their SmartSearch web portal. From their offices in Leeds, SmartCredit provides a simple to use and highly effective website, delivering a PASS/REFER result within a few seconds, removing the need for documents such as driving licences and passports to be gathered in 96% of cases.

This provides an essential service to businesses such as accountants, solicitors and estate agents, where an AML check is a legal requirement, reducing costs and streamlining the client take-on process.

SmartCredit is a highly successful business recently doubling in size and moving into new premises.

“Our business relies on constant telephone contact with our customers and prospects, and we use the web all the time for demonstrating our products and services. When we moved to new premises, we chose the DrayTek IPPBX and router solution; as well as great value for money we have a reliable system that works brilliantly for our organisation.“

Fraser Mitchell – SmartCredit

The Requirement

SmartCredit is in constant contact with their customers and prospects through a sales and management team. With such a high degree of phone usage, the first key requirement was a highly reliable phone system that was easy to use and could cope with multiple simultaneous calls.

During the course of a sales call the SmartSearch service will frequently be demonstrated to show ease of use and the high quality of information produced. This means that the constant availability of the voice and data network forms an essential part of the success of the business. So as well as having a great phone system, the reliability of the data network is equally as essential.

Finally, it was vitally important to SmartCredit that the system was installed within budget, deployed within a tight timeframe and working from day one.

The Solution

SmartCredit approached Phase 4, a specialist Unified Communications dealer based in Harrogate that provides integrated data, voice and CCTV systems. It was essential that the installer organisation had plenty of experience in data/voice to meet the customer requirements. Phase 4 is an AVP (Advanced Voice DrayTek Partner), so had all the necessary training and accreditations to recommend and successfully implement such a solution.

The DrayTek VigorIPPBX 2820n was selected as the phone system, with Yealink T22P office handsets for most of the team and 2x T28P handsets as receptionist phones, one on each floor. The combination of DrayTek’s SIP compliant IPPBX with voice mail, call transfer, night service and the neat ability to email a voice mail as a WAV file, together with the easy to use and well-designed Yealink phones made for an ideal combination.

One of the great features with the VigorIPPBX 2820n is the ability to connect two separate broadband services into the one device. This multi WAN port feature provides the ability to load balance traffic across two connections, completely separate voice and data traffic or have a hot standby connection available in the event of line failure. Currently Smart Credit use VigorIPPBX 2820n for voice only with a separate DrayTek Vigor 2920 router for their data but are intending on utilising the dual WAN capability for complete line resilience.

For their phone services SmartCredit selected DrayTEL, DrayTek’s preferred telephony service provider that provided a SIP trunk allowing multiple simultaneous calls to be made at any time. The system has been in place since November 2011 and has provided a highly reliable and effective solution for the company. Also, the combination of great value for money on the physical hardware, plus the low-cost calls associated with DrayTEL SIP services, has delivered real savings to the business.