Ad Network Improves Time to Market and Lowers Cost: BBDO Germany sets up new locations 10 times faster, while reducing comms cost-per-desk by 25 percent.

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Challenge
Advertising is all about using effective communication and groundbreaking
techniques to deliver clear, compelling messages. But BBDO Germany, a group of
eight ad agencies within Publicis Omnicom, the world’s biggest advertising group,
was relying on a phone system more than a decade old and poorly integrated. As
a result, the company had to depend on a range of vendors to keep the system
going, since even the voicemail service was provided by a third party.
The challenge was becoming more difficult as an increasing proportion of the
voice estate reached end-of-life and spare parts became harder to find. Although
the system provided a reliable voice service, it was difficult and time consuming to
maintain and was unable to offer more advanced collaborative services. Handsets
had to be manually configured for each new joiner or desk move, and setting up an
office in a new location was a problem.
“With the old system, it could take weeks to get comms up and running,” says Martin
Bandze, head of IT at BBDO Services, the Dusseldorf-based company charged with
delivering IT infrastructure across the German agency network. “But, in an agency
you have to do things in hours. Flexibility is crucially important.” BBDO had five people
dedicated almost exclusively to managing the phone system, and when one of them
was away, the team was stretched. “We wanted one central system for the offices,”
Bandze adds.
Solution
Already using Cisco® technologies in its Wi-Fi infrastructure and network perimeter,
BBDO Germany moved to a FlexPod integrated data center infrastructure built on the
Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS®) and Nexus® Switches with NetApp fiber-
attached storage.
Customer Case Study
Advertising Agency Network Improves
Time to Market and Lowers Cost
BBDO Germany sets up new locations 10 times faster, while reducing communications cost-per-desk
by 25 percent
Customer Name: BBDO Services
Industry: Advertising
Location: Germany
Number of Employees: 2800
Challenge
• Improve communications company-wide
• Reduce cost and time to market
• Enhance productivity
Solution
• Cisco Collaboration Architecture,
featuring Cisco Jabber, Unified
Communications, and WebEx
Results
• Reduced new office communications
setup times by factor of 10
• Helped decrease dedicated IT resources
by 70 percent
• Lowered internal call costs by
30 percent
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 1 of 3

2. Customer Case Study
Having enjoyed a good experience, BBDO opted to compare the Cisco Collaboration
portfolio to that offered by its existing vendor. Ultimately, the decision to go with Cisco
was based on a combination of technical and total cost of ownership considerations.
BBDO put together a business case analyzing the five-year costs of each solution,
including wide-ranging operational expenditure factors such as the number of
employees needed for maintenance.
“We chose Cisco because of price and functionality,” Bandze says. “Cisco offered
a high level of integration, whereas our previous vendor had bought one software
company after another and had not integrated their products completely. This
meant that its softphones did not work with older versions, for example.”
The new Cisco collaboration infrastructure is based on a Cisco Unified
Communications Manager cluster, forming a delivery platform for services such as
session management, voice, video, messaging, mobility, and web conferencing.
This foundation serves 3000 endpoints for around 2800 users, spread across four
agency networks and 12 offices in 10 locations.
Separately, the BBDO outdoor advertising subsidiary, OMG Outdoor, deployed Cisco
WebEx® and integrated it with Microsoft Active Directory. The cloud-based solution is
used extensively for web conferencing, with around 1200 users appreciating the ability
to share desktops, high-definition (HD) video, files, and applications with colleagues
and clients.
One of the most significant elements within the communications mix has been the
implementation of Cisco Jabber®, which BBDO selected as its softphone client of
choice. Jabber lets staff access presence, instant messaging, voice, video, voice
messaging, desktop sharing, and conferencing from a single interface that can be
installed on any device. It has been implemented on each company workstation
in Germany, including about 800 Apple Mac desktops, and on approximately 400
mobile devices, most of which are iPhones.
Cisco Jabber and WebEx have been integrated with Active Directory, synchronizing
users’ contact lookup details with real time presence information. The installation
and integration were delivered by collaboration experts and Cisco Global Certified
Partner, Dimension Data.
Results
BBDO employees rely heavily on voice communications and were not yet major
users of unified communications tools such as video or instant messaging.
Accordingly, most agency users had handsets with prescribed functionality, and the
desk phone was not generally seen as a major productivity-enhancing tool. But it’s a
different story with Jabber.
Previously, whenever a staff member moved to a new temporary location, the first
thing they usually had to do was log in and send emails notifying colleagues of
the nearest extension they could be contacted on. With Jabber, they can get to
work straightaway. “This has transformed communications across the business,”
says Bandze.
Jabber may not have reduced travel costs much, since ad execs still need to
spend time with clients or on location, but it has certainly helped employees to be
more productive. “The Cisco solution offers single-number reach, but it’s Jabber
that really made a great step forward,” says Bandze. “Today, everyone uses the
Jabber client on their smartphone, so they’re reachable wherever they are.” In
fact, Jabber has become so entrenched in the company culture that nearly 100
employees have taken the unusual step of asking to have their desk phones taken
away, because those endpoints are no longer needed.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 3
“The Cisco solution offers
single-number reach, but
it’s Jabber that really made
a great step forward. Today,
everyone uses the Jabber
client on their smartphone,
so they’re reachable
wherever they are.”
Martin Bandze
Head of IT
BBDO Services

3. The flexibility that Jabber provides was dramatically illustrated when a team of
10 from the BBDO public relations agency network, Ketchum Pleon, was sent
on an assignment to Kazakhstan. The agency gave just three-days’ notice of its
communications needs. “In the event it took only three or four hours to set them
up,” Bandze says. “We installed Jabber on their laptops and away they went.”
The time needed to connect up a new office has dropped from weeks to days
because the Cisco equipment is essentially ready to use, whereas previously
new systems would have had to be ordered and installed. Bandze says: “With the
new setup, it’s around 10 times faster. Before, it was a week or more just to get a
scheduled onsite date and then a person had to set up the system. Now, we send a
ticket to Dimension Data, and in two days it’s done.”
Along the way, the reduced need for telecommunications infrastructure has helped
reduce the communications cost-per-desk by 25 percent. At the same time, the
company’s phone bill has fallen by 30 percent, because internal calls are now routed
for free over the internal Cisco based network. Meanwhile, the number of people
needed to look after telephony has dropped from five to one-and-a-half, a 70 percent
reduction, freeing up resources for higher-value activities. This reduction is partly
due to the fact that the systems are now operated by Dimension Data, as a managed
service. BBDO is clearly seeing benefits from having one system from a single vendor.
Going forward, BBDO is considering deployment of Cisco TelePresence, integrated
with WebEx to help drive greater productivity.
Customer Case Study
“Cisco offered a high level
of integration, whereas
our previous vendor had
bought one software
company after another and
had not integrated their
products completely.”
Martin Bandze
Head of IT
BBDO Services
For More Information
To learn more about the Cisco architectures and solutions featured in this case
study, go to:
www.cisco.com/go/collaboration
Product List
Collaboration
•• Cisco Unified Communications Manager Version 8.6
•• Cisco Jabber
•• Cisco WebEx
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Printed in the UK ES/0514 Page 3 of 3
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