How AMVIA Unified Communications and IT for Seven Projects' Growing Team

Who is Seven Projects?

Seven Projects is a professional services firm serving clients across healthcare, education and social care in the UK. The business had grown quickly, with staff split between head office, remote consultants and people working on-site at client locations. That growth is exactly what exposed the cracks in how the team communicated and how its IT was run.

• Sector: professional services (healthcare, education, social care)
• Profile: fast-growing, distributed team across office, remote and client sites
• Brief: one supplier for connectivity, IT, Microsoft 365, VoIP and cybersecurity

What was the challenge for Seven Projects?

Communication was fragmented. Staff were using different phone systems, personal mobile numbers, WhatsApp and email for client contact — making it hard to keep communications consistent or to track activity for compliance. The IT estate was just as patchy, with no central management, no monitoring and no backup of business-critical data.

New starters were onboarded without a consistent process: some received properly configured devices, others set themselves up on personal equipment and consumer Microsoft 365 accounts. There was no security baseline, no single owner, and a legacy phone system never configured for the company's current size.

The professional services sector handles sensitive client data, so the gaps mattered. For context on why this matters in education and skills, the source cites that *"92% of UK higher education providers have dedicated cybersecurity staffing"* — reflecting their position as significant targets — by contrast, *only 37% of further education colleges* have dedicated cyber staff *(Jisc)*. The same brief also referenced that *"87% of IT professionals reported experiencing SaaS data loss in 2024"*, with malicious deletions as the leading cause *(2025 State of SaaS Backup and Recovery Report, The Hacker News)*.

Seven Projects' leadership wanted to fix the communications fragmentation and the IT maturity gap in a single programme — and with one managed supplier, not a patchwork of providers.

What did AMVIA do?

AMVIA proposed a single managed service covering connectivity, IT support, Microsoft 365, VoIP and cybersecurity, delivered on one monthly subscription. The work was phased so the highest-impact changes landed first: Microsoft 365 security hardening and VoIP deployment inside the first two weeks, then device management and backup, then the broader IT support transition.

The VoIP build integrated directly with Microsoft Teams. Staff got a single client for internal messaging and external calls, with business numbers routing through Teams on laptops and mobiles — removing the need for separate desk phones at most positions. AMVIA managed the number porting end to end, transferring every existing business number and walking staff through Teams calling setup before the porting date so nothing dropped.

Across Microsoft 365, AMVIA enforced multi-factor authentication, which the NCSC recommends as a baseline control, and applied Conditional Access policies that blocked the legacy authentication protocols behind most credential-compromise risk. This mirrors AMVIA's wider approach to Microsoft 365 security for SMEs.

What technology did AMVIA deploy?

The full stack combined connectivity, communications, Microsoft 365 and managed security under one provider. Each element was chosen to remove a specific gap — fragmented calling, unmanaged devices, no monitoring, and a head-office circuit that had outgrown its broadband line.

• AMVIA's managed business VoIP system with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing — all external calls routed through Teams on desktop and mobile
• Microsoft Teams Direct Routing for business-grade calling inside the Teams client staff already use
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium with AMVIA's security baseline — Conditional Access, MFA, Microsoft Defender for Business, and email security
• Microsoft Intune for device management across company-issued and BYOD devices
• AMVIA's managed IT support with unlimited helpdesk and 24/7 monitoring
• A managed leased line upgrade at head office, replacing a business broadband circuit no longer adequate for the team's size

What were the results?

The unified deployment changed how the whole team worked. Every member of staff — office, home or client site — could make and receive calls from their business number through Teams. Internal calls were free, call recording supported compliance with client SLAs, and an auto-attendant gave Seven Projects a more professional external image. All of it landed in two weeks.

The Microsoft 365 hardening closed the most pressing gaps fast. MFA was enforced on all accounts within days, Conditional Access blocked legacy authentication, and Intune gave the IT team visibility and control across the device estate for the first time. Consolidating from five suppliers to one removed the management overhead of coordinating multiple vendors — leadership now deals with a single account manager, one monthly invoice and a dedicated escalation path. AMVIA's managed cybersecurity keeps that baseline monitored after go-live.

Communications & IT — before and after AMVIA