Thursday, July 24, 2008

‘Green’ Unified Communications Contact Centre By PSI And Nortel.

MELBOURNE, Australia – Contact centre outsourcing specialist PCI is building a new unified communications contact centre facility in Melbourne using energy-efficient network solutions from Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] and Platinum nPower channel partner Commander.

PCI delivers a wide-range of contact centre services for national and multinational clients, including some of Australia's largest telecommunications, banking, information technology and utility companies and is aiming to reduce their carbon footprint with Nortel's unified voice, data and wireless network at its Melbourne headquarters.

The 6,000 square metre greenfield site will be fitted with an all-new, fully IP-enabled network supporting 715 active agents and up to 850 concurrent users that will enable the company the flexibility to manage its contact centre agents' activities regardless of their physical location, allowing them to work from anywhere while retaining their same phone number, caller groups and access to network resources.

"As the first point-of-call for many of our clients' customers, we have a massive responsibility to be 'always available' for incoming calls, and to be able to get the right people to answer those calls as quickly as possible," says Jason May, general manager, Integration, PCI. "From a technology perspective we also have a responsibility to maintain an efficient and sustainable work environment, and as a result a major determinant of the technology we used for our new facility was its efficiency in terms of power draw and emissions."

"Moving to new premises also gave us the opportunity to extend this theme to the way we manage our call agents, taking into account things like travel time and physical location," says May. "Nortel's unified communications solutions were not only ideal for this purpose, with location-independent calling and presence giving us far more control and flexibility over agents' whereabouts, but Nortel's energy-efficiency ratings are also far superior to those of its competitors."

"As with any large-scale technology rollout one of the biggest costs is the energy to power and cool the equipment," says Phil Allan, CEO PCI. "Nortel demonstrated such a clear lead in this regard with its energy-frugal equipment that the savings in ongoing operation and lower TCO were reasons alone to choose its solution, not counting all the other benefits it offered."

"We live in an age where Hyperconnectivity – single users with multiple networked devices like PDAs, smart phones and computers – is changing the nature of the contact centre to the point where call agents can no longer limit themselves to voice and e-mail interaction to service their customers properly," says Mark Fioretto, general manager, Enterprise Solutions, Australia and New Zealand, Nortel.

"A fully integrated, unified communications network empowers the agent to field and direct any type of call from any customer, using any device or media, from a unified desktop client or mobile interface," says Fioretto.

The Nortel solution for PCI incorporates the latest Communication Server 1000E IP PBX, supported by a highly resilient Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) network delivering Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and gigabit speeds to every desktop. Wireless LAN coverage is provided by the Nortel Multimedia WLAN 2300 solution enabling secure wireless connectivity to all staff.

The solution also includes Nortel's Call Pilot unified messaging and Communication Control Toolkit, which enables simplified integration of the Contact Centre and PCI's line of business applications. CallPilot further saves PCI resources by providing employees with unified messaging and contact center voice services from a single server. End-to-end deployment, integration and on-going support services are being delivered by Commander's Advanced technical services team.

A recent report from Tolly Group found that certain of Nortel's network switches were more energy efficient than certain competitive products1.

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