Team Spirit

When MHA MacIntyre Hudson first approached Backbone Connect, the firm was in the process of welcoming staff back into the office as it transitioned from remote to hybrid working, with staff splitting their week between the home and office.  

However, with 245 desks and 340 staff in their new City of London headquarters, MHA MacIntyre Hudson’s IT Director, Gary Lee, knew that a number of operational issues would need to be dealt with quickly. Video conferencing has become the norm in the workplace, employees expect to be able to join a video call as easily in the office as they do at home, without any network interruption.  

While the firm’s modern City of London offices were designed for collaborative working, the current line and patchy 4G and 5G coverage meant this would be difficult to implement. It became clear that a lot more bandwidth and wi-fi points would be required to allow staff to replicate the behaviours they had acquired during remote working.  

From this realisation, quickly scaling up the current network to a much higher capacity, became an urgent priority to ensure that the transition from remote to hybrid working was seamless. 

It just works

Backbone Connect already had an existing connection in the building, making the company an obvious choice, says Gary. “I was on a tight timeline and needed a quick implementation. Knowing that Backbone Connect already had access to the building made them an attractive candidate from the get-go. Speed of connection was a priority for us. When we met Backbone Connect we knew that they were the right people for this project straightaway.” 

Working alongside the project team at MHA MacIntyre Hudson, Backbone Connect delivered on the tight timescales set by the client.  

The roll-out was seamless and well-delivered, giving the firm the flexibility to quickly scale up or down to meet the shifting needs of its workforce. The ability to divide the line into different networks meant that it can seamlessly cater to MHA MacIntyre Hudson’s different traffic, whether that be the corporate/work traffic, or social traffic.  

The high-capacity network has allowed Gary and his team to focus on other things without worrying about network interruptions. “It just works. If you have a network and you always need to call customer support, you have a problem. The set-up was straightforward. Things happened in the timescales we wanted, and I didn’t have to think about it again, which is what you want. It just runs smoothly and without interruption in the background.” 

If the firm needs to scale up in the future, knowing what is involved in terms of timescale and cost is reassuring, he adds.