Kiwi company reaps the benefits of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise UC platform

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), along with business partner Cogent, has provided a Kiwi packing and cool storage company with a single unified communications platform for staff and temporary workers.

The platform has the ability to support BYOD with the My Instant Communicator Mobile Client over the company's own WiFi network.

Trevelyan's employees now have a single communication device they need to carry and care for, and can take advantage of features such as unified call logs, company wide dial by name, and a single unified voicemail box with a visual list of messages.

Since the solution has been deployed, Trevelyan's has increased employee efficiency and significantly reduced its communication total cost of ownership, says ALE.

Trevelyan's specialises in packing and storing green and gold kiwifruit as well as avocados, and due to the seasonal nature of the business, staff numbers and requirements spike at certain times during the year.

The staff may grow from 100 permanent to 1,400 temporary employees during the harvesting periods.

Prior to the deployment of the ALE solution, staff were using a combination of personal and Trevelyan's provided mobile phones, as well as additional DECT handsets connected to the OmniPCX Office RCE.

This meant staff had to carry and care for multiple devices.

According to ALE, this created disjointed and expensive communications, which were ultimately unproductive, personally awkward and expensive.

Due to the fluctuations in headcount, Trevelyan's needed a scalable and cost effective communications solution for their permanent and temporary workforce.

Furthermore, the rural location and cool store environments meant poor coverage by the public mobile network, so the company required a reliable and efficient alternative voice communications system.

ALE provided a low risk, low cost SW Upgrade of the system to the latest SW and enabled the deployment of the new BYOD capabilities, integrating smartphones into the OmniPCX Office RCE.

Cogent, ALE's business partner, had a long standing relationship with Trevelyan's, and its products and services fit with ALE's solution.

Trevelyan's now uses Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Office Rich Communication Edition, and the Alcatel-Lucent OpenTouch Conversation for iPhone (SMB), with VoIP Companion.

Paul Harker, Trevelyan's Pack and Cool IT system manager, says, "We required simplified management and maintenance in our day to day operations, while not leaving out high efficiency.

"We now have a solution with lesser hassle compared to past communication systems, thanks to Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.