Continuant, a UC systems integrator based in Washington State has just been awarded Microsoft’s 2023 Global Partner of the Year for Converged Communications for a second time. The company, who won their first Global award for Teams Calling and Meetings in 2020, is among few who have secured two Global awards from Microsoft, let alone within 3 years.
As Partner Success Manager, Allison Hudson, Continuant, explained:
“This award is a testament to our expertise and professionalism, not only as an organization but as a team. We genuinely care about our customer’s journey to the cloud and are excited that we were able to share our story about enabling digital transformation for Parexel users. To be recognized for these efforts by Microsoft further solidifies our belief that we are the best in the business.”
Parexel, a multinational biopharmaceutical services organization, faced a significant challenge. Their existing telephony infrastructure, serving thousands of employees in over 40 nations, fell short of providing a true Enterprise Unified Communications Platform. This resulted in employee dissatisfaction and inefficiencies in day-to-day operations.
Parexel sought a unified, cloud-forward solution that would seamlessly connect all users, irrespective of their geographical location or local carrier. The current platform offered inconsistent and unreliable UX, leading to communication gaps with clients, vendors, and colleagues. The issue was exacerbated by the inability of on-site desk phones to support remote workers.
Adding to the complexity, Parexel's video conferencing application suffered from poor connectivity and lacked user-friendliness. Disparate systems, including analogue devices and standalone meeting applications, lacked simple features such as one-touch join and automation, making it challenging for employees to use effectively. Maintaining the existing ecosystem of legacy systems, servers, and cabling added to the high operational costs already in play, in a situation that would only worsen over time.
It was time to take the necessary leap into modern UC, and partner with a services provider who could facilitate disciplined scheduling, project management and exemplify strong leadership at all levels with minimal friction and disruption.
Leveraging Continuant's Industry Expertise
Planning a migration of this scale is a monumental task. Parexel partnered with globally recognized managed services provider and system integrator, Continuant. With 27 years’ experience managing Cloud, Voice Systems, networking, UC and AV environments, Continuant was the practical choice to design and deploy the perfect cloud-based Teams solution.
"In 2022, the Continuant team began working with Parexel, and it was a massive migration involving 16,000 users in 40 countries. This involved unique requirements specific to each nation, and finding vendors that could work within the parameters set forth by each region."
