Microsoft Teams has rapidly established itself as the default tool for professional communication and collaboration, powering interconnected workflows in the era of hybrid working. However, the way licensing for Teams works with your wider Microsoft ecosystem is about to change, which means it is essential that you establish how your licensing arrangements will be affected and take steps to maintain the levels of performance and cost-control you depend on.
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Even as the end of lockdown approaches, it is clear that hybrid working is here to stay, with organisations utilising remote and office-based working on a flexible basis, in order to combine the advantages of both.
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Failure Demand: "Demand caused by failure to do something or do something right for the customer"
Seddon, 2003
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In July of 2019, Exponential-e hosted a roundtable at The Ritz London, bringing together 18 top UK architects to discuss topical issues across the sector and sharing views on the matters at hand. One of the topics raised was the newly launched Architects Declare manifesto and its 11-point plan for tackling climate change and biodiversity loss. From 16 founding signatories, word spread like wildfie and within weeks, hundreds of practices - large and small - signed up, signalling that our architects were ready commit to operating in a greener, more sustainable manner.
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As part of an ongoing effort to offer greater consistency and transparency across their full range of solutions, Microsoft have recently announced several pricing updates.
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Working together to establish a new standard of excellence for IT service desk operations
About BDO
BDO UK provides tax, audit and assurance, advisory, and business outsourcing services to companies across the public and private sectors, with more than 9,500 employees operating out of 18 office locations across the UK.
The Challenge
In order to better support its analysts across the country, the decision was made to execute a full-scale digital transformation of the entire Virtual Contact Centre and Teams Dialling system, building on the existing investment in Microsoft Teams to establish a centralised platform through which end users could make contact via a range of channels, including voice, email, and chatbot. This would ultimately support the phasing out of legacy telephony in favour of more scalable, flexible omnichannel solutions, while providing team leaders with real-time visibility of the entire service desk operation. The quality of BDO's IT service desk improved as an outcome acknowledged by the Service Desk Institute, who awarded it a four-star rating in 2024.
Critical priorities for the project were simplifying the management of Microsoft Teams licences, which needed to be purchased on an individual basis with the incumbent solution, and streamlining and optimising the user journey wherever possible, taking full advantage of the latest innovations in AI-powered automation and analytics.
A rigorous tender process was conducted, with a key priority being the ability to design and deliver a solution within four months, avoiding any operational disruption. At the end of this process, Exponential-e were selected as the sole technology partner for the project, building on an already strong partnership with BDO, and began working closely with their contact centre and back-office teams to determine the ideal specifications for the new platform.
Based on this findings of this assessment process, Exponential-e's Teams Calling as-a-Service platform, integrated with the industry-leading Five9 Intelligent CX suite and the ServiceNow® ITSM solution, was identified as the perfect fit for BDO's requirements, providing users with the Teams functionality they had come to depend on, while also opening the door to a wide range of potential enhancements.
The Solution
The tools Exponential-e have provided have contributed towards the digital transformation journey BDO have been on. Our mutual passion for the user experience has helped us reshape our whole approach to the service desk, and we're very much looking forward to building on these successes in the years ahead.
Lee Trimmer, Head of Service Delivery, BDO
The first phase of the deployment involved managing a seamless transition for all analysts and end users by replicating their existing Teams functionality in the new platform, allowing them to start making use of it straight away. This meant the migration process was completely invisible to the 6,000 employees already using Teams.
With this foundation in place, BDO began working with their dedicated account team to identify potential opportunities for automation, the first of which involved the onboarding process for new joiners, who would automatically receive an email with the details of the Teams dial pad, with no manual intervention required. At the same time, should an end user leave the company, their account would automatically be closed and their number made available again. This pay-as-you-go model immediately resulted in tangible cost savings by ensuring BDO would only ever pay for the licences in active use.
Building on this, the Five9 platform was heavily customised to suit BDO's specific goals for its overall user journey. Key to this was the integration of the platform's chatbot with BDO's own Azure LLM and ServiceNow®, allowing it full access to an evolving knowledge library. This bespoke chatbot (dubbed ELSA!) is now able to automatically direct users to the article most likely to lead to a successful resolution. If it is unable to do so, they are automatically put through to the appropriate analyst.
ELSA's intuitive, conversational interface and broad range of insights meant the initial uptake was high, averaging more than 200 interactions per month, of which around 50% are resolved with no need for human intervention. The chatbot's capabilities have since been extended to run automated routine fixes with BDO's primary audit tool, saving service desk analysts time and offering the users faster resolutions.
As a result of these improvements, BDO have significantly reduced their service desk's dependence on traditional telephony and email, with most end users now preferring the inherent flexibility and ease of the new chat and self-service options, allowing analysts to more efficiently manage their cases.
With the implementation of Five9's workforce engagement tool, BDO are looking to automate further quality control checks to focus directly on problem areas rather than relying on dip sampling calls. Through the application of intelligent analytics, this identifies which interactions team leaders should listen to in order to support their analysts, identify gaps in the user experience, and act on new opportunities for improvement as they emerge. When combined with the technical data collected by ServiceNow®, this will provide BDO with a holistic, real-time view of its entire service desk operation.
The transformation of BDO's service desk was later recognised at the Service Desk Institute's 2025 awards ceremony, where it was named as 'Service Desk of the Year – Large Team'. It is also now eligible to be certified as a five-star service desk, of which there are only four in the world at the time of writing.
BDO have long led the charge for service desk excellence, and the success of this project is testament to that. When people and technology come together in this way, a seamless, interconnected user experience becomes possible across every channel, which I fully expect to become the new standard for service desk operations.
Gareth Hayes, Head of UC & CX Solutions, Exponential-e
Solution Benefits
- A seamless migration process from disparate
legacy technologies, with no disruption to day-to-day operations
- Intelligent automation of routine processes
enhances analysts' efficiency and performance, freeing them to focus on the
most complex cases
- 50% of all interactions resolved without any
need for human intervention, thanks to a bespoke chatbot and evolving knowledge
base
- Automated onboarding and offboarding of employees and sustainable cost savings through pay-as-you-go pricing
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Establishing IT as a true driver for innovation across the UK's Construction Sector
About Knight Harwood
Knight Harwood is a trusted provider of construction and engineering expertise to a wide range of leading brands and organisations across the UK, with a particular focus on London and the Home Counties. Projects range from new build to heavy and structural refurbishments and fit out, with a highly collaborative, proactive approach ensuring the highest levels of quality, from design to completion.
"What sets Exponential-e apart is that we can really tailor the way services are delivered and expedite the whole process, should the need arise. We've got a solution that really works for us, and – most importantly – I know I can email Nelly with anything, and she'll be right on it."
Rob Symmons, Head of IT, Knight Harwood
The Challenge
Construction projects, by their very nature, require an agile approach to IT, due to the highly varied nature of the sites and the stringent timeframes that must be adhered to. Sites often require connectivity to deployed at just a few days' notice, which means the sector's technology partners must be able to operate with the highest levels of flexibility and agility, working closely with organisations' own IT teams to ensure project requirements are consistently communicated, understood, and properly executed.
To fulfil these singular requirements, Knight Harwood engaged Exponential-e as their trusted technology partner, providing both fibre connectivity and key software licenses.
The Solution
A dedicated account manager serves as Knight Harwood's primary point of contact at Exponential-e, ensuring all projects can be initiated and completed within the designated timelines. To offer further support around project delivery, Knight Harwood's team have direct access to multiple specialists across Exponential-e - including several at director level - who are on-hand whenever needed.
A key focus is providing the foundational connectivity to new sites, working closely with Knight Harwood's own teams to ensure that project specifications have been understood and acted upon, and all targets and deadlines achieved. This includes establishing how the underlying infrastructure will be managed, and how it is expected to be developed in the future.
Exponential-e's ongoing deployment of fibre under the streets of London has proven critical to the success of numerous construction projects around the city centre, with the ideal connectivity readily available well in advance of the desired opening day. This responsiveness has been further enhanced by Exponential-e's contractual flexibility and ability to conduct site surveys with as little as forty-eight hours' notice, ensuring the required connections can be made as soon as possible.
The hands-on support of their account manager has massively streamlined Knight Harwood's deployment processes for each project, complementing the highly flexible, agile nature of their work on some of the UK's most innovative construction projects.
Exponential-e also provides multiple key software licences for Knight Harwood's teams, including Fortinet and Mimecast, as a fully managed service, enhancing the flexibility and scalability of their IT ecosystem, and ensuring they continue to enjoy highly competitive pricing for these platforms.
This partnership continues to evolve further with each project, with Exponential-e operating as an extension of Knight Harwood's own team, optimising their agility and ensuring they can always focus their time and resources on areas where they can add the most value to each project.
Solution Benefits
- Hands-on support throughout every stage of project delivery, with a dedicated account manager serving as a single point of contact.
- A highly flexible, agile approach to project delivery, allowing high-performance connectivity to be deployed within the tightest deadlines.
- Highly competitive pricing for multiple key software licences, delivered as a fully managed service.
- A bespoke approach to each deployment, ensuring the most specific requirements can always been fulfilled on time and to budget.
"Knight Harwood's IT department operates as a lean team, but working with Exponential-e, we've shown that things can be done differently, and IT can be a real asset to the company. Now, it's focused on transformation rather than just resolving problems, driving efficiency across the board and enhancing our staff's capabilities."
Rob Symmons, Head of IT, Knight Harwood
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