Consulting

Update your Partner in Effective Communications

Update Services Limited an integral Division of the Update Educational Services Group formed in 1999, building on the experience of high calibre communications professionals with at least 20 years experience each.

Update is equipped to offer consultancy & education on a global level and have been successful with:

National Health Service – UK, Foreign & Commonwealth Office – Globally, Cogent Defence – UK, Nationwide – UK, Nortel Networks – UK & Spain, AT&T (Rogers Wireless) – Canada, Orange – Belgium, NTL – UK, Barclaycard – UK, Winterthur Life – UK, BT – UK & Spain, Energis – UK, Dutchtone – Netherlands, Siemens – Switzerland, Boeing – USA, Ericsson – Sweden, Safaricom – Kenya, United Nations – Globally, British Airways – UK, Lucent Technologies – UK, Cabovision – Portugal.

Our service is fully flexible and enabled and optimised through:

Personnel – Consultants/Engineers/Managers with a minimum of 20 years experience.
Design to Deliver – Solution and System design across all technologies from Paging to Voice over IP, system design utilising Structured System & Design Methodology 4.
Projects – All our projects are completed utilising Prince2 (Projects in a Controlled Environment) methodology.
Performance – Increase the performance of both your systems and personnel with our non-disruptive service.
Procurement – Design and deliver and support the right vendor’s solution for your needs, all procurement carried out in accordance with POISE (Procurement of Information Systems Effectively).
Service Management – In accordance with ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)
Security Risk Assessment and Management – Full audits in accordance with CRAMM (CCTA Risk Assessment and Management Method).
Supplier Liaison and Management – Making the most of you suppliers.
Issue/Problem Resolution and Negotiation – ensuring your organisation achieves its goals.
Fraud, Crime and Security – Full investigation and audit capturing both Internal and external fraud and abuse.
Cost Benefit and Analysis – Realise tangible financial benefits
Inter-Organisation Cooperative Working and Consortium – Working for greater efficiency and cost avoidance.

For a no obligation and no-pressure informal chat, please contact us on: 01793 608707, find out today what we can do for you!

Effective Design Means Cost Effective Telecommunications

The complexity of modern telecommunications systems and technologies can and almost always will cause unnecessary disruption to both existing systems and personnel.

Most businesses have difficulty enabling effective solutions without recourse to expensive and in most cases unnecessary overspend on their voice and data services. Given the huge outlay for telecommunications services in today's digital world, those excess costs often lead to a reduced service to your users.

Update can achieve system design, procurement and effective management cost management, delivering significant cost reductions to you while simultaneously improving your overall telecom infrastructure. All of our cost-saving services can be individually tailored or put together to address your unique telecommunications expense management needs.

Update’s permanent staff, form a solid team with vast experience in Enterprise, Operator, Manufacturer and Service Provider environments. This enables us to offer end to end solutions without recourse to our independence to work with best of breed at any level. Our consultants have been involved on the following very successful projects:

Nationwide: Consultancy and vendor buffering for Next Generation cost efficient converged (Voice over Internet Protocol) VoIP solutions. This project enabled Nationwide to rationalise their communications systems with a move to a single technology solution for both Voice and Data, offering controlled return on investment (ROI) on systems with a staged move to VoIP. The project was shown to offer an immediate 30% saving over traditional voice services with the added incentive of increased production of customer service style services, the long term goals of Converged communications were mapped to a 5 year 50% saving over traditional systems.

Royal Air Force: Introduction of accrue accounting, service and system selection for voice platforms (PABX/PINX) systems – multi site. This project led into introducing effective policing of fraud and a further move to intrinsic adoption of single point provisioning for voice solutions, annual saving obtained on voice budget was in excess of 20%. (each site involved had annual budget in excess of £5M)

National Health Service: Consultancy and vendor buffering for Next Generation communications (Voice/Video – Data – Mobile) convergence for a UK wide solution to multiple sites with various user requirements to enable high bandwidth traffic carriage coupled with effective and simple service provision. This project is on-going; however, initial output has already identified vendor/operator over-provision at a number of medium sized sites in excess of 15% on infrastructure alone.

The examples shown above are just a small example of projects past and present, other successes include:

Consultancy and Re-engineering (software) a mobile network in central Europe that due to SMS overload was suffering outages causing $900,000.00 (US) loss a day.
Consultancy and Re-engineering of a number of enterprise customers PABX systems and networks to ensure correct least cost call routing and maximum user benefit of supplementary services.
Consultancy and protocol support for the next generation of IP networks to a number of major manufacturers, this included appropriate new layer four provision to enable effective real-time traffic carriage on IP networks.

Update are very confident of the service they can offer and understand that in line with business objectives require to make considerable savings on ICT costs. These savings can be obtained in a number of ways for which Update would be happy to discuss in open forum during a meeting at your convenience.

Following are examples of some of the services we offer as an insight into how we can assist you to achieve and surpass your goals

Infrastructure Deployment Project Management

Alongside the analysis and design of a network, there has to be planning for the deployment. Effective Project Management provides a clear framework for achieving the exit criteria of the project.

All projects must be measured as they progress and regular reports generated so that all stakeholders and team members can monitor achievements and progress. A strong focus on teamwork and inter team cooperation to build full project involvement for all.

Measurable Quality Assurance established at the outset of the project and employed during the project life cycle to achieve a Quality Output.

Project Management Objectives

End to End impact design analysis to ensure deliverables meet user objectives.
Management of internal and external resources to ensure process co-ordination.
All party involvement to ensure complete project work packages.
Detailed planning and stakeholder commitment to ensure that the project is completed on time and within budget.
Full user involvement to set the project entry criteria, so that the deliverables will meet the full expectations of the user.
Matrix management techniques to make the most effective use of the people involved with the project.
Promote effective communication between the projects team members and key stakeholders.
Ensure that project risks are identified, analysed and any mitigation is in place before project commencement.

Mobile Optimisation

We can offer a cost-effective service to uncover immediate and dramatic savings of on your mobile services. We will look at your billing information and then find each user the most appropriate plan from any of the carriers.

We handle the entire process from start to finish, taking the pain out of the countless hours required to oversee the thousands of available plans and the thick pile of complex billing statements. Our report provides you with specific plan change recommendations from the many that are available.

Network Technical Services

The purpose and use of a network may change as time progresses, which can mean that it is costing too much, either through inefficiencies in design, or through performance failures. With employee turnover, budget restrictions and rapidly evolving network needs, many companies struggle to maintain proper control over this critical functions. Update will use all of our technical recourses and expertise to improve your telecom network infrastructure.

Design and deploy network elements
Upgrade technologies and equipment
Network documentation
Network Optimisation

Because our overall company focus is telecom cost management enabled through consultancy & education, we are aware of providing services and recommendations that save you money while improving performance. And, as with all our services, we are 100% independent of carriers and hardware/software vendors. We don't sell or take commissions for anything we recommend, so our advice is guaranteed to be objective.

Whether you need total project management, sophisticated network mapping and documentation, or some targeted technical advice, we can provide services to match your needs. We have experience with all the following network components:

Transmission Systems Fibre, copper and microwave. PDH, SDH and ATM. ISDN. GSM/GPRS/3G (UMTS), Satellite Communications
Network Management Systems Fraud. Security. Call Detail Recording. Disaster Recovery. Traffic Management
Voice Communications Digital PBX and Switching Networks. Voice Mail Systems. Call Detail and Station Message Detail Recording Systems. Call Centers and Automatic Call Distribution Systems. Audio Conferencing Solutions, Call/Contact Centres (including Virtual Contact Centres)
Data Communications TCP/IP. X.25. Telemetry Networks. Frame Relay. Point -To-Point and Multi-Point Networks. Video Conferencing.
Converged Communications Voice over IP (VoIP), Next Generation Networks – for Voice, Video & Data (wireline and wireless)