River Partnership
A global executive search firm finds a communications partner that keeps pace, wherever in the world the work takes them.
About River Partnetship
River Partnership is a global executive search firm working across professional services and consulting, with clients all over the world. For a business built on relationships and fast moving deals, communications that work, reliably, everywhere, aren’t a luxury. They’re the job.
The problems that brought River Partnership to Fusion started with something deceptively simple: SIMs that kept failing. The firm was already on EE, but through a different third-party supplier, and handsets would periodically behave as though there was no SIM in them at all. The founding partner was affected more than anyone else, going through three SIM replacements, and while the supplier’s workaround was to send out blank SIMs that could be swapped over, it was a fix that treated the symptom rather than the cause.
Voice was a separate headache. River had been using previous provider directly for their phone system, but as a smaller business, they found themselves at the bottom of the support queue. When something went wrong, Sophie had taken to fixing it herself, including setting up the Teams integration from scratch, because waiting for previous provider to help wasn’t a viable option. It worked, but it wasn’t the point. And with international calling costs difficult to predict, the team needed a better setup.
Sorting Mobiles First
River Partnership came to Fusion initially for their mobile estate. The move kept them on EE, the network wasn’t the problem, but changed who was managing the account. The effect was almost immediate. The SIM failures that had been a running frustration simply stopped, which answered the question the team had been asking: it was the previous supplier, not the network.
With stable connectivity in place, Sophie also found it straightforward to manage the account through the Fusion portal, monitoring usage, downloading invoices, and keeping the finance director in the loop. She’s since added him as a user on the portal directly, so he can pull invoices himself rather than waiting for them to be sent over. Small thing, but the kind of friction-free admin that matters when you’re a lean operation.
A Smarter Voice Solution
The voice conversation started when Sophie was already shopping around to move off previous provider, not away from the product necessarily, but away from managing it without any real support. She got in touch with Steve to ask whether Fusion could handle previous provider. His answer was more useful than a yes: Fusion had actually stopped working with previous provider, and he wanted to show her Webex instead.
It turned out to be the better option. Webex came in at a lower monthly cost than River had been paying, while delivering more functionality, including automatic call transcription, which quickly became a favourite with the team. No more manually starting a recording, no more trying to remember what was said three calls ago. The AI summary is there before anyone’s had a chance to forget.
And when there was a hiccup, the transcriptions disappeared for a period while the AI summaries kept appearing, Sophie messaged Oliver, who came back within hours to say he’d raised it with Webex. He then emailed again that evening with an update, and again the next morning. Sophie arrived at work to find the problem logged, tracked, and actively being managed. That kind of proactive communication, updating without being asked, is exactly what had been missing before.
What It Looks Like Now
River Partnership’s communications setup is simpler, more reliable, and better value than before. The SIM failures are gone. The voice system costs less and does more. Support arrives in hours, not days, and it comes proactively, without Sophie having to chase. The Webex transcriptions alone have changed how the team handles calls, removing a small but persistent piece of friction from the working day.
There was one early stumble, the first time a team member travelled internationally, a roaming bolt-on hadn’t been applied as expected and an unexpected bill arrived. It was resolved quickly, and the account has since been set up to handle it properly. The founding partner, who travels most, now has roaming coverage in place as standard. It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to flag and fix, and the speed with which it was sorted is typical of how the relationship has worked.
With plans to grow the team by two or three people over the coming year, River Partnership is well set up to scale, more licences, more devices, the same straightforward setup they have now.
What we delivered, check out
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We’re here to help you take the next step! Whether you have questions, need more information, or are ready to transform your communications, our team is ready to assist. Reach out to us today and discover how Fusion can make a real difference for your business.