Technology and art in harmony

at major London gallery

“The ease with which Palebeck were able to move our entire communications infrastructure more than vindicated the decision to go back to them and Panasonic” commented Perry Jarvis, IT Manager at Haunch of Venison, shortly after Palebeck had faced up to the fact that they had lost a long standing client.

“The ability to deploy IP phones wherever we need across the buildings or even at remote locations has really given us the flexibility we need” continued Perry. “The team at Palebeck were helpful and knowledgeable throughout and we’re glad to have them back again.”

The Haunch of Venison had been a customer of Palebeck for many years, entrusting the smooth running of their business communications to London’s longest standing Panasonic direct dealer. When Christie’s took over the gallery, expansion and the need to renovate large parts of the building led them to seek a replacement for their trusty Panasonic DBS telephone system.  To comply with procurement policy, two additional suppliers were invited to bid for the work in addition to Palebeck and when it came down to decision time, the IT Manager at the time opted to place the business with one of the other two firms and in fact move completely away from Palebeck and Panasonic.

This decision proved costly, as before long they learnt that to transfer calls between the two linked buildings with their new system they would need to dial lengthy digit strings. In addition, and most frustratingly, callers to their main number experienced long delays before they would hear ringing. Some even hung up assuming there was a fault.

Neither the new supplier nor the equipment manufacturers were able to explain or resolve the issues hence Haunch of Venison approached Palebeck once more to sort everything out.

Palebeck proposed the installation of a Panasonic KX-TDA200EP telephone system paired with a KX-TVM200E Voice Processing system.

This would allow:

• The provisioning of digital extension phones in the offices and IP extensions in the new gallery space in the adjoining building.
• The ability to run these IP extensions on the existing data cabling between the two buildings.
• A central operator who would answer and distribute calls using a short and logical extension numbering scheme.
• DDI (direct dial inbound) numbering to allow the option for callers to dial specific extensions or groups therefore bypassing the operator.
• A central voicemail that in addition to delivering and recording messages could also forward these as e mail attachments to a user’s inbox.

The installation was completed in December 2007 and the decision to go back to Palebeck and Panasonic was fully vindicated a year later when renovation work meant that the office staff had to temporarily relocate into new premises. These rented offices had wiring constraints precluding the installation of further cabling or points. Effectively they would have to deploy IP extensions to every desk so that the phone and computer could share the same socket.

Palebeck were able to simply swap out the digital extension cards and phones for their IP equivalents and supply KXNT343 and KXNT136 IP phones for the desks. There was no loss of functionality or speech quality and the change went virtually unnoticed by the staff, suppliers and customers.

Haunch of Venison

The Haunch of Venison gallery was founded in London in 2002 by Harry Blain and Graham Southern; the latter having formerly run the London contemporary art department of Christie's auction house. It has branches in Zurich, Berlin and New York and exhibits mainly contemporary art.

In 2007, Blain and Southern left the art world reeling when they sold to auction house Christie's breaking the age old tradition of separation between the commercial activities of galleries and auction houses. The gallery thrived though and in March 2009 it moved into temporary premises at 6 Burlington Gardens, just off New Bond Street whilst their existing gallery and offices underwent redevelopment. This 18th century Grade 2 listed building had been empty for ten years and was formerly the Museum of Mankind, housing the British Museum’s extensive collection of ethnographical objects. It is really two buildings linked together; a Georgian house and an Edwardian show room which extend through the block from New Bond Street to Haunch of Venison Yard.

During it’s time the building has also been used for storage by Philips auctioneers and in the early 1900’s the rear had been converted to house a car showroom, the latter providing the generous top lit salon spaces and the introduction of the glazed link to the Georgian building on New Bond Street.

For more information visit www.haunchofvenison.com