House of Travel has improved staff performance and experienced cost savings since initiating a move to a combination of Gen-i Voice Connect and Microsoft Lync 2013.
Voice Connect is Gen-i’s Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) voice communication service that connects with either an in-house or hosted PBX and can be iintegrated with other ICT services.
“When we first looked at switching to Voice Connect and deploying Lync as our corporate PBX, there were few other organisations in New Zealand that had made the transition,” said Dave Veronese, CIO at House of Travel.
House of Travel operates under a joint venture business model, with Veornese’s team providing ICT services that support 1150 people across 80 sites, including retail stores, corporate division Orbit Travel, online sales and the central holdings company.
In 2013, Veronese converged all of the business’ IT and telecommunications contracts and negotiated a group solution that would deliver cost savings and allow them to quickly rollout new technologies.
Following a competitive tender, House of Travel renewed its voice, mobile and data services contract with Gen-i in January 2013, extending their long standing relationship by another three years. It supplements an existing contract with Revera for its data centre hosting in Christchurch and Auckland.
“We’re passionate about seeking out and sharing new travelling experiences for our New Zealand customers, and Voice Connect enables us to increase the speed at which our people can communicate and access information anywhere and at any time, to help them achieve that goal,” said Veronese.
According to him, staff in the House of Travel stores particularly appreciate the removal of desk phones, which have largely been replaced by wireless Bluetooth VoIP headsets.
“Our staff are enjoying the mobility and flexibility that comes with this new way of working, such as being able to work from home, participate in video meetings remotely and easily make calls while travelling,” said Veronese.
With ten stores migrated by the end of 2013, another dozen are keen to transition and the pipeline is growing, according to Veronese.
“We met our target of migrating 100 users by the end of 2013, and expect to easily exceed our target of 350 users by the end of 2014.”
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