Sales: 0845 470 4001 | Support: 0845 230 6001 | Contact Form | NPS

Exponential-e & BDO

blog-header-exponential-e-bdo

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
  147 Hits

Preparing for DORA: What do these new regulations mean for finance and insurance firms?

preparing-for-dora-what-do-these-new-regulations-mean-for-finance-and-insurance-firms
When it comes to insurance and financial services, the ability to offer clients peace of mind is the key to ensuring the sector's continued longevity. Cyberattacks are evolving in frequency and sophistication, with criminals selecting progressively more ambitious targets, and even minor IT outages, whether they're caused by human error or 'acts of God', will have a serious effect on firms' operations, negatively affecting both profitability and brand reputation. With this in mind, firms must reconsider the way they approach operational resilience, particularly regarding the way access rights for critical systems and data are managed.
  1323 Hits

A tech-powered customer experience for the new era of financial services

A-tech-powered-customer-experience-for-the-new-era-of-financial-services

From day-to-day consumer banking to high-profile asset and wealth management, the way we all access financial services is changing in ways that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Online banking is now firmly established, allowing customers to manage their money securely within a few clicks - anytime, anywhere and without the need to visit a branch. A 2022 survey revealed that the quality of the online experience was a key factor in 81% of adults' choice of bank1.

  2181 Hits

Morningstar

Morningstar-deploys-global-1Gig-Wide-Area-Network-for-faster-and-more-reliable-data-deliver_20200910-130222_1

Morningstar deploys global 1Gig Wide Area Network for faster and more reliable data delivery.

About Morningstar

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The organisation offers an extensive line of products and services for individuals, financial advisers, and institutions.

Morningstar U.K. opened in London in 2000 and launched its investing website in 2001. The website offers access to objective information on more than 9,000 funds available to individual investors in the U.K


Reduce complexity, increase speed and reliability

Exponential-e is a trusted technology partner for organisations across the Finance sector, offering innovative solutions that drive security, compliance and optimal performance at all levels.

Find out more in our Finance Brochure.

  8940 Hits

Making sense of the Cloud-buzz: what quick wins are available to establish Business and Security value?

Making-sense-of-the-Cloud-buzz-what-quick-wins-are-available-to-establish-Business-and-Security-value
On Thursday 25th April, Exponential-e held a Financial Services and Insurance roundtable event at 'M Restaurant' in Victoria, London. The event brought together leading figures from these two sectors to share their experience of Cloud adoption and the benefits it can provide to businesses.

The conversation was kicked off by guest speaker Steve Deakin, Head of Development and Operations at Lloyds of London, discussing his experiences of Cloud and the client perspective. Next followed Nick Robinson, Systems Engineering Manager at Palo Alto Networks, who provided a view of real world innovations and shared Cloud success stories that he has seen from his clients across EMEA.

Here is a high level summary and description of the quick wins that were discussed:

The Process:

  • Learn -> Hack -> Iterate


Horizon Scanning & DevOps with an AGILE mind-set

  • Microsites and Micro services that are already trialled, tested and robust from an architecture and security perspective - this enables one to rapidly deploy new products and services, websites etc. with security peace of mind.
  • Serverless - just focus on writing codes and you can make changes in microseconds! It is easy to deploy, low cost, gives you more time to focus on UX and is more efficient for developers by ensuring you are keeping code backed up and in a secure environment.
  • Grid Data Analyst - overcome floods and complexity of big data and unlock the power of analytics with the right data in the right place.


Cybersecurity

  • OWASP Top 10 - whilst the threat landscape remains consistent year on year, everyone should make sure they are aligned to the latest as it evolves. Assuming the top 10 remains unchanged or that changes are incremental such as low priority to action, can lead to vulnerabilities. www.owasp.org
  • NCSC - The National Cyber Security Centre is an organisation of the United Kingdom Government that provides advice and support for the public and private sector on how to avoid computer security threats. www.ncsc.go.uk
  • Ethical Hacking - this should be continuously implemented - leverage Pen testers and vulnerability scanning as much as possible in order to follow best practices and processes - Learn -> Hack -> Iterate.
  • Social Engineering was also discussed, not so much as a quick win due to the complexity (get the simple things right first) however, advised to leverage Pen testers to protect your business from bad actors that use social engineering tactics.
  • Multi Factor Authentication – we discussed how this is a very low hanging and important measure to put in place. Leverage MFA to 1) require individuals to provide two or more authentication factors to confirm their identity for online transactions or to gain access to corporate applications, networks and servers and 2) insight and reports on the user's activity. Identity (IAM) and Privilege Access Management (PAM) were also mentioned as a further way to secure your business.
  • Security Information and Event management (SIEM) - leverage SIEMS as a means to log attacks. An IT Service Provider can provide an important layer of service to proactively manage, monitor and report on what the SIEM is seeing on a 24/7 365 basis.


Cloud Patterns


Data Lakes

  • Building out centralised repository for enterprise data, for tasks such as reporting, visualization, analytics and machine learning - leveraging cloud partners to build out big data solutions.


A debate for another day

  • DevOps and Open Source software is and will continue to be the main target for bad actors, they hold the code (the crown jewels). Should such resources have locked or unlocked internet access? On one hand it offers flexibility and agility, on the other it is more locked down and has a stronger argument from a security perspective.


#Azure #AWS #CloudPatterns #Cybersecurity #OWASP #NCSC #DevOps #HorizonScanning #EthicalHacking #Digital Transformation

  3491 Hits