Sports brand Puma has replaced its old telephony systems with a VoIP service in a bid to better integrate with the firm's current IT structure.

With a head office in Leatherhead, a distribution centre in Yorkshire and a showroom in Manchester, the firm's UK operations were spread far and wide.

But the linking of the offices with a company intranet made it possible to merge its antiquated telephone systems with its data services.

According to Puma's IT manager Dave Butler, before installing VoIP it was "virtually impossible" to route calls around the company and it had been identified as a weak point in the firm's structure.

"We had to rely completely on third-party organisations to support this critical part of our business," MrButler said.

However, integrating VoIP into the company via the firm's intranet solved these problems, while also allowing Puma to regain some office space by bringing its two previous receptions together into one location in its Yorkshire centre.