14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia’s Lumia smartphones are picking up pace not only in the end-user segment, but also in the business area, with Foxtons, London’s leading estate agent, adopting the Lumia 820 for its employees.
The company has announced that the business features of this device would make it a great option for its staff of around 900 people, and that it has partnered with Nokia for deploying it.
Foxtons has 35 offices throughout London and two in Surrey, and manages to sell around 1,400 properties every month.
The company claims that the tight integration with existing Microsoft infrastructure was the main decisional factor in choosing the Lumia 820 for its employees.
Foxtons uses Microsoft Outlook so that its staff can take advantage of complete property information for each calendar appointment, while also benefiting from easy synchronization capabilities, and Nokia's Lumia device also offers support for it.
“In a fast moving business with many staff movements across departments and locations, keeping an accurate, up-to-date contact list is a challenge for us,” Dan Rafferty, IT director of Foxtons, explains.
“We’ve developed an app integrating our personnel system with our active directory and phone system so all the information is accurate and can be accessed directly from our agents’ Nokia Lumia 820s. It’s a great timesaver and asset for the team.”
“The Nokia Lumia 820 aligns with our entire device strategy and allows us to fully integrate our current Microsoft systems throughout the company,” he also says.
The company’s employees will be able not only to make calls on their new smartphones, but also to check emails and prepare for their next appointment, so as to stay one step ahead of competition.
Furthermore, the built-in Microsoft Office applications on Windows Phone 8 will provide them with the possibility to easily work on Excel spreadsheets and edit Word documents while on the go.
The company also started deploying its own applications for the Lumia 820 smartphone, so as to increase the efficiency of its agents.