Avaya Takes IP Telephony to the Business
Avaya Takes IP Telephony to the Business
June 1, 2007: Zack Taylor, sales VP for Avaya says we’re standing on the ‘tipping point’ of IP communications and the future will have businesses using communication to drive company processes forward.
The vice president for Global Strategic Solutions says it’s a ‘tipping point’ that leads to “the acceptance of any type of scenario whether it be a trend or not, when it finally reaches mass impact.” In the realm of IP telephony, that means mass market adoption and acceptance of the business value of the technology.
Looking forward, Avaya believes the future of telephony will be about how communication processes are applied to the institutionalised nature of business “The future is much like today but even more so,” says Taylor. “The future itself we see will raise the component value of communication away from the ad-hoc manner today to a more institutionalised way of communication to move company processes forward.”
Meanwhile Avaya’s Australian managing director Carlton Taya believes the IP revolution has already hit home for most Australian organisations. “Today we’re seeing a convergence of organisations and intelligent communications,” he says. “We (in Australia) are an early adopter but we’re also quite a sophisticated market.”
Taya suggests a high penetration rate of IP telephony in Australia, estimating that 70 percent of large enterprises have already moved forward. “There are some businesses that still have a basic need for telephony, sometimes the case is just not compelling enough and unlikely to deliver any actual business benefits.”
One organisation to successfully shift their IT telephony infrastructure forward is Direct Health Solution (DHS,) a business offering telephone based healthcare advice in the corporate arena in order to reduce ‘sickies.’
DHS implemented the Avaya IP Office, an Intelligent Communications suite to assist in routing calls to the most specialised nurses while also building a solid platform for the future. Employees or corporate organisations calling is sick are directed through to the DHS Avaya-supplied contact centre who office initial healthcare advice over the phone.
Paul Dundon managing director at DHS says the organisation is planning to grow their workforce significantly over 2008, a goal that will be realised through remote telephony infrastructure. “Many nurses stay out of the workforce to raise a family or because they reside in remote locations,” he says. “The Avaya contact centre solution has the flexibility to be extended to enable our nurses to work from home forming a key part of the company’s retention strategy.”
With a conference delegation of almost 400 attendees, Taya says the first day of the event brought to life the fact that customers are increasingly looking to drive technology investments to fit in line with their business objectives. “We’re telling them the big story here, we’re talking about intelligent communications,” he says.