With the move to a hybrid workforce, SolutionsPT was faced with the limitations of its existing on-premises PBX. IT Manager, Dallen Lord, says: “We had softphone capability with the PBX, but we all naturally moved to Microsoft Teams when we started working from home. We ended up with two separate phone systems, which meant calls were missed because people were not logged into the PBX and only using Teams.”
SolutionsPT is a digital transformation specialist dedicated to the industrial sector. They offer a wide range of industrial automation and IT solutions, backed by professional consultancy, training, and support services. Recognised as one of the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For, SolutionsPT employs around 120 people at its headquarters in Cheadle, Cheshire.
“The existing communications solution wasn’t working for us, so we needed to find an alternative,” says Lord. The search turned out to be more complicated than simply finding a Teams-friendly telephony system. “The existing PBX gave us a lot of functionality, with automatic call distribution (ACD) for our technical support and operations teams. It was a good PBX, but because of our changing business needs, we needed to find a solution that would allow us to receive calls through Teams, but also provide ACD and the advanced call routing functionality we already had. Another challenge was that we needed to integrate Microsoft Dynamics and a suite of business applications.”
To address these challenges, SolutionsPT turned to its trusted partner, avoira. avoira offers a comprehensive range of services and solutions for converged ICT, managed from start to finish. As as a vendor-independent value-added reseller (VAR) and solution provider, avoira provides unbiased and expert advice. After hearing the business challenge, avoira proposed deploying Microsoft Teams Direct Routing to replace the existing, non-integrated PBX-Teams setup. Direct Routing would provide a single, cloud-hosted telephony platform that would allow calls to be made and received on any Teams-enabled device using existing DDIs.
However, this still left the issue of advanced call functionality that SolutionsPT needed to optimize customer service standards and maximize operational efficiency. To address this, avoira recommended a number of products that would meet the requirements. “We went through a rigorous selection process that included demonstrations of various contact center products,” says Lord. We had a team of six, different team leaders from operations, technical support and sales. We evaluated each of the vendors and everyone put Luware Nimbus at the top. We were pretty confident that it would give us the functionality we needed.
Luware Nimbus is an Extended contact center for Microsoft Teams that adds contact center and task routing functionality to the platform. SolutionsPT chose Luware Nimbus Enterprise Routing because it makes it easy to route calls and tasks to Microsoft Teams-based teams, such as help desks or customer service teams, and allows for easy integration and automation with third-party business tools – such as Microsoft Dynamics. Enterprise Routing also includes an impressive reporting tool that can capture and present a wide range of data. This can significantly improve management insight to enable more efficient staff deployment and customer service satisfaction. Another benefit of Luware Nimbus Enterprise Routing is that it is licensed on a flat-rate group basis, rather than the traditional seat-based model. This is not only more transparent but also more cost-effective.
SolutionsPT’s IT team worked in partnership with Avoira’s engineers to plan and deliver what Lord describes as a “seamless integration”. The transition from PBX to Teams and Luwae Nimbus was so stress-free that it raised the eyebrows of both Lord and Technical Support Manager, Sam Tomlinson. “It was almost too smooth!” says Tomlinson. “It just worked from day one and we haven’t had any problems since. To be honest, I’ve never seen anything go so smoothly.” With the solution successfully embedded, the company was able to focus on its capabilities and benefits, of which there are many.
“One of the biggest things is that it’s much more robust than the old system,” Lord enthuses. “We also have better visibility and reporting. Luware Nimbus has given us a highly flexible, customizable package that allows us to really tailor the data we need and the way we look at it. We can generate insights and reports, data points and KPIs that we’ve never been able to do before. Tomlinson adds that Luware Nimbus “gives us a kind of heat map of our busiest times, which allows us to better plan resources and ensure that calls are answered as quickly as possible”.
“We now have the ability to screenpop into Dynamics. When a customer call comes in, the operations team gets a populated contact record in Dynamics based on the identity of the calling line. The operator can immediately see who is managing the contract and quickly route the call to them,” explains Lord. “The technical support team can also see the call, say ‘hi’ and ‘I see you have a problem with X, Y, Z.’ It saves time searching for recordings and provides better customer service.” The call monitoring, whispering, and barge-in features are also heavily used. “That’s an important feature, especially when we have new hires. We need to be able to coach and train them while they’re on calls. Coupled with the simplicity, effectiveness, and cost-saving benefits of Direct Routing, it’s safe to say the new solution has transformed SolutionPTs communications and enhanced the experience for its customers.
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This text was adapted from the original case study published on avoira.com