Background
In 2024, private equity firm May River Capital consolidated four specialised industrial manufacturers—Spiroflow Systems, Cablevey, Marion, and Kason Corporation—to form Akona Process Solutions. Together, the group engineers high-specification processing equipment, serving market leaders across the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, and aggregate industries worldwide.
Following the merger, Akona faced the challenge of integrating four distinct European operations across the UK, Germany, France, and Poland. Establishing a unified communications infrastructure that matched the scale of the new organisation became a critical strategic priority. Operating across international borders with a growing remote workforce, leadership needed a reliable platform capable of delivering seamless cross-border collaboration while offering the flexibility to scale with the business.
Supporting Growth Across Borders
Akona’s leadership capitalised on the post-merger integration to break down operational silos and simplify how its European teams communicated.
The objective was to move past operating as fragmented, country specific businesses and build a fully connected European operation, one where teams could easily share resources, cover for one another across markets, and work seamlessly regardless of location.
Having managed Spiroflow’s pan-European mobile estate for nearly a decade, GTN already had a deep understanding of Akona’s business, its teams, and the practical challenges of operating internationally. With the move into Akona’s new Darwen headquarters complete and existing communications contracts up for review, the timing was right to bring the entire business under a single strategy. This represented a major transformation project involving multiple international sites, hundreds of users, and business-critical systems—all delivered without disrupting day-to-day operations.
Delivering the Transformation
Working closely with Akona, GTN designed and delivered a unified cloud communications platform that connected every European site under a single managed service.
GTN managed every stage of the deployment, including international number porting, core system configuration, call routing, hunt-group design, administrator onboarding, and end-user training. By taking full accountability from planning through to go-live, GTN ensured the new environment reflected how Akona operates today while building in the scalability needed for future growth.
Coordinating a multi-country migration requires more than technical planning; it relies on helping teams adapt to change. As users transitioned from traditional desk phones to a softphone environment, GTN provided hands-on training, direct support, and ongoing guidance to ensure teams felt confident from day one. Initial hesitation quickly disappeared as employees got used to the new system.
The cutover itself was executed with impressive precision, achieving a completely seamless transition with zero disruption to ongoing business operations.
We almost didn’t notice the switchover. Tom and Greg were on hand to ensure it went seamlessly and provide some training for the Admin users and general users on all the benefits and settings of the system.
Ben Ayrton, EU Managing Director, Akona Process Solutions
Result
Today, Akona’s European divisions operate as a single, connected business.
Bringing all locations onto one platform has made it easy for colleagues to support one another across borders, improving client responsiveness and enabling seamless cover during public holidays. Remote employees can now communicate easily with colleagues across Europe while significantly reducing international calling costs.
Alongside the communications rollout, GTN deployed Conversational IQ across Akona’s sales and engineering teams. By securely recording and transcribing customer conversations, the platform provides a reliable reference point for technical specifications, project requirements, and client handovers, helping teams maintain accuracy across complex engineering projects.
"Coverage across the EU is easier. We have lower call costs; we can call remote staff without additional cost to the business rather than relying on international mobile calls."
"I've worked with GTN for nearly 10 years across our mobile contracts in the UK, Germany, Poland, France, Belgium, and Spain. Their understanding of our business and the speed at which change can be made makes GTN a great partner to our growing business."
