For Immediate Release: 26-Sep-2002
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIAAvaya Inc. (NYSE: AV), a leading global provider of
communications networks for businesses, and Platinum
BusinessPartner Touchbase today announced a major deal with
Australian Contact Centre Industry leader Stellar Call Centres. The
deal, worth in excess of one million dollars, is for the technology
to drive Stellar's new 255-seat-capacity contact centre in
Richmond, Victoria. Avaya Interaction Centre (AIC) and Avaya Call
Management System (CMS) form the core of the solution, which was
designed and implemented by Touchbase. According to Phil Kingham, Group Manager IT&T for Stellar
Call Centres, an initial 170 CTI enabled seats are planned which
include email, web and fax capability and predictive dialling
functionality. The Avaya solution, which is flexible enough to accommodate
future enhancements to service offerings, includes email
management, a fully blended voice environment with web co-browsing
and collaboration capability delivered through Avaya's centralised
routing engine. Stellar will also implement an Avaya DEFINITY G3r
Media Server, which will integrate with its existing Avaya Call
Management System, as well as Avaya Operational Analyst, which will
provide sophisticated reporting, monitoring and business
intelligence capabilities. "With AIC we can scale up or down depending on our clients
needs. We also keep finding more products in the Avaya CRM
portfolio that meet our technology needs, and that depth of
functionality is very important to us," Mr Kingham said.
"Technology is not the bottleneck it once was; we now have a very
scaleable and flexible environment." AIC enables a more personalised customer experience, with
enhanced ability to offer customers more choice in how they
interact with contact centre agents. It also cuts the time needed
to introduce new telemarketing programs for clients to target their
customers. "From contract sign-off to going live with the new program, our
response times are significantly quicker than in the past and we
can offer cross-channel service independent of the media
available," Mr Kingham said. "People want to interact in different
ways: that vision's been around for two or three years but only now
with the maturing of the market has fulfillment of that need become
possible." The ability to move to a converged contact centre solution and
link various sites together via VoIP was another requirement that
Avaya could fulfill. "Avaya has a proven brand and market share which gave us
confidence in our technology choice," said Mr Kingham. According to Touchbase's business development director, Peter
Murray, Touchbase employs engineers fully trained in designing,
implementing and supporting AIC version 6. "To meet client requirements, Stellar needed the new solution
within just four weeks. Avaya and TouchBase are working together
using a dedicated team of five engineers and technicians to deliver
170-seat capacity in time," said Mr Murray. Ongoing expansion of the deal is highly likely, with Stellar
Call Centres expecting to roll out AIC for a number of its
Australian sites. Other products in the Avaya portfolio are also
being evaluated including Avaya Interactive Voice Response and
Avaya Intuity Audix voicemail and fax capability. "Stellar Call Centres wanted to offer its customers the
advantages and capabilities of a multimedia contact centre, with
the aim of growing the business in different areas," said Mr
Murray. Sunny Rao, General Manager of Enterprise Solutions at Avaya
South Pacific, said AIC offers greater functionality translating to
increased capability and benefits for Stellar Call Centre
clients. "AIC allows Stellar Call Centres to leverage the benefits of
process automation, and integrate more deeply with their clients'
databases and customer information systems," Mr Rao said. "This
means that they can offer more personalised service and optimise
use of existing customer information and human resources." Touchbase and Avaya worked together to develop a
'proof-of-concept' trial solution and provided 24-hour helpdesk
support post-implementation. This enabled Stellar Call Centres to
see the solution designed, installed and operating successfully
while minimising business impact and cost. "We will continue working strategically with Stellar to enable
solution evolution and longevity of the partnership," Mr Rao
said. | 
