BRITISH AMATEUR GYMNASTICS ASSOCIATION ROLLS OUT INTERNET TELEPHONY

Business Environment
VoIP networks and IP phones can offer tremendous benefits to organisations with multiple locations. British Amateur Gymnastics Association (BAGA), the Governing Body for the sport of Gymnastics in the UK required a call management solution that would allow them to connect their remote offices and home workers while considerably reducing call costs.

Based at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire, British Gymnastics works from three separate buildings with a total of 80 staff of which 20 work from home or remote offices. Considering the vast advantages of Internet telephony, British Gymnastics decided to make use of its broadband connection to create a robust VoIP environment.

The Challenge
British Gymnastics had an Avaya PBX system in place. Three years after its original implementation, the system reached its end-of-life. They did not want to upgrade the system with its current replacement product and wanted instead to opt for a feature-rich platform which adopted open standards technology.

British Gymnastics explored the possibilities of a VoIP solution, primarily because they had a number of remote offices that could easily be linked using voice over IP on their existing broadband connection and the considerable potential for cost savings on inter-office calls. The system also needed to be scalable and interoperable with other vendors’ equipment. Overall, they required high reliability and flexibility.

Their foremost concern was, if their existing LAN infrastructure would cope with the additional VoIP traffic. They were also concerned if QoS (Quality of Service) would be an issue, both on the LAN and WAN.

With prior experience of using an Asterisk PBX, British Gymnastics chose to go with an Asterisk-based VoIP solution due to its overwhelming advantages over a proprietary hardware-based VoIP PBX.

British Gymnastics chose Telappliant as its Internet telephony solutions vendor having had previous experience trialing its VoIPtalk™ service and utilising its superior technical support services.

Solution
British Gymnastics approached Telappliant specifically asking for an Asterisk implementation. Although Telappliant has its own web-based IP PBX solution, called VoIPOffice™, British Gymnastics wanted to leverage their internal I.T. expertise to get the most out of a pure Asterisk platform. Telappliant was chosen to supply, configure and install the Asterisk solution.

Telappliant managed an out-of-hours migration strategy to ensure that BAGA’s users would be seamlessly migrated from the legacy telephone system to a fully VoIP-based solution. “I am very pleased. We now have a very stable PBX platform,” says Ben Willcox, IT Manager for British Gymnastics. “By migrating to an Asterisk platform, we have dramatically reduced our call costs while at the same time inheriting a feature rich, open platform which has also improved the mobility and efficiency of our organization. Telappliant provided us with support and assistance every step of the way to ensure that our migration was as seamless and straightforward as possible.”

Outcome
In the short term, the implementation of a single unified dial plan across all of the remote offices is the biggest improvement for British Gymnastics as it means that calls can be made between extensions regardless of the physical location at no cost. Remote users can use softphones on their laptops to make telephone calls back to the office from anywhere in the world. While inter-office calls are free, calls to any other destination can be made at huge cost savings using the Telappliant VoIPtalk Internet telephony service.

In the long term it offers BAGA the possibility to integrate the IP PBX with their existing operational and business support systems to provide additional services to their members, such as information services delivered via SMS. This is made possible by using the Asterisk server as a gateway to a third party bulk SMS provider.

Customer Comment
“There are numerous advantages of opting for an open source Asterisk solution. These include the ability to run on standard server hardware and provide easy integration points with our existing systems and applications. Asterisk has a global support community which means that my team has access to an extensive existing knowledge base. Furthermore there are no ongoing software licensing costs and adding features and fixing bugs is simply a software upgrade. An advantage of a software-based PBX is that we can now run a test/development server with identical configuration, to test any required changes before applying them to the live system, for just the hardware cost of a spare PC.”

“Despite the initial challenges with the implementation, the technical team at Telappliant were very helpful and responded very quickly to get all the issues resolved to ensure that we had a reliable, solid PBX platform,” said Ben Willcox.

VIBRANT MEDIA ADOPTS TELAPPLIANT VOIPOFFICE IP PBX FOR A SCALABLE, FLEXIBLE AND RELIABLE CALL MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

The Business Environment
Vibrant Media is an established advertising solutions provider reaching markets worldwide. Providing contextual advertising solutions to leading publishing companies, Vibrant Media enables an international network of leading web publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of advertising relationships and maximise their revenue potential.

Established in 2000, Vibrant Media spans four offices in two continents - San Francisco, New York, London and Hamburg – with over 120 staff. When Vibrant Media was looking to move offices to Central London, they had discussions with their numbering provider who stated that it was not possible for them to take their existing telephone number from one exchange to another despite being less than a mile apart.

Vibrant Media wanted a flexible, reliable and scalable option that would allow them to deploy handsets throughout their private network to connect to staff around the world and also realise substantial cost-savings. Since its offices are spread across two continents, inter-office calling costs were getting too high. As Vibrant Media’s business grew, it needed its phone system to expand with it.

Vibrant Media’s foremost concern was bandwidth and a solution that would not compromise on voice quality.

The Solution
Vibrant Media required the consolidation of both voice and data traffic over their existing Internet link. Demands of email, web browsing, work on their production network and file replication of the corporate network all had to compete for bandwidth. Telappliant’s quality of service (QoS) based voice over IP solution was the only one that met their requirements as a cost-effective, robust and scalable offering.

Telappliant’s technical team proposed Vibrant Media with VoIPOffice Standalone Edition, a site-based version of Telappliant’s IP PBX offering. VoIPOffice provided the diverse applications that their business environment necessitated and the advanced customer support that they were looking for.

The Outcome
Telappliant VoIPOffice IP PBX enabled Vibrant Media to route inbound calls to anywhere within their enterprise and provide least cost routing for outbound calls. Vibrant Media was also able to scale the system and deploy several advanced high-end IP telephones into their branch offices to easily connect to staff located in other countries.
“Having VoIP handsets in our remote offices means we can call them for free. We’re contemplating deploying VoIPOffice to those locations and trunking directly to them,” says James Bromberger of Vibrant Media. “We are extremely happy with the VoIPOffice solution put in by Telappliant and the ongoing support that we were looking for.”
Superior Quality and Reliability
Telappliant’s VoIP implementation has been a definite success with Vibrant Media enjoying several significant business benefits.

James Bromberger said, “Our previous experience with Telappliant led us back to them. Our IP PBX solution is great and having a competent company run it is invaluable. The flexibility of a true VoIP system without the commercial lock-in of other proprietary manufacturers means I can expand this system more rapidly and cheaper.

“Replacing legacy technology with VoIP handsets, such as the Snom 360, has been great. Coupled with my corporate VPN, I can now log in with a softphone when I am not in the office to place and receive my calls. This has been really useful when I am traveling.”

Telappliant Develops Scalable Hosted Solution to Transform Serenata Flowers’ Sales Process for Greater Growth

About SerenataFlowers.com
SerenataFlowers.com is an independent online retailer of flowers and gift items based in the UK. Founded in 2004, Serenata runs 3 fulfillment centres across the UK - London, Birmingham and Manchester.

The Requirement
SerenataFlowers was relocating its customer service centre to new offices and was looking for a solution that would reduce its internal communications costs. Moreover, the cost of maintaining traditional phone systems soon had the company looking at new ways to efficiently handling the calls and reducing internal communication costs. Serenata wanted to maximise value with their customers to deliver services which enhance greater profitability and improve competitive advantage. The primary features of any call management solution they were to adapt had to have call queuing, music-on-hold, remote virtual extension and voicemail functions among others.

Challenge
Initially, Serenata looked at upgrading their traditional PBX solution. However, considering the comparable feature set in a traditional solution which would require a greater capital outlay as well as higher ongoing costs, Serenata turned to Telappliant for a VoIP solution.

Although the low cost calls and the advanced feature set made available via VoIP solutions were an attractive prospect, quality and reliability were of paramount concern to SerenataFlowers.

Solution
As a market leader in the UK with proven experience in VoIP services, SerenataFlowers chose Telappliant as its solutions provider. Telappliant’s technical team proposed SerenataFlowers with VoIPOffice Hosted Edition, a hosted service of Telappliant’s IP PBX offering. The Hosted Edition didn’t require substantial upfront investment and provided the advanced feature set that Serenata was looking for.

As a highly scalable solution, the hosted edition will continue to meet Serenata’s growing needs.

Outcome
Telappliant was able to implement the solution in a few weeks with negligible impact on service. Next up for Serenata is to use Telappliant Services to enhance call management
features such as call queuing and reporting. Serenata is also exploring the possibilities of implementing a bespoke IVR solution.

With one member of the Customer Service department based in New Zealand, Serenata wants to deploy more remote staff to enable round-the-clock customer service.

“This solution has resulted in more productive staff that can use remote extensions to work from home seamlessly. One member of our customer service team works from abroad in a different time-zone which enables us to offer 24/7 customer service. We are very excited about what the VoIP technology promise.”

Peter Ahl, Managing Director, SerenataFlowers.com