Broadacres
Broadacres House, Mount View, Standard Way, Northallerton,
North Yorkshire. DL6 2YD. England

Company Background:

Broadacres Housing Association provides a comprehensive range of services to over 5,200 homes in North Yorkshire. Established in 1993 the Association has grown both in terms of the number of properties it manages and its awareness of the needs and aspirations of its customers.
Broadacres operates under charitable rules and has a governing body of twelve volunteers including four tenants of the association.

Our Headquarters is in Northallerton, North Yorkshire. We currently have stock in Hambleton, Darlington, Spennymoor, Richmondshire, Harrogate, Redcar and Cleveland, Ryedale, Selby and East Riding of Yorkshire and Scarborough.

Broadacres provides homes for rent, shared ownership and outright sale.
We provide a range of support services to different client groups including persons with mental health problems, learning disabilities, older persons, people with physical disabilities, those fleeing domestic violence, people suffering from alcohol and substance misuse and the homeless.

In addition, we have a home improvement agency to assist with property adaptations and repairs to enable people to continue to live in their homes. Broadacres also has a 24 hour customer contact centre used by a number of organisations to action repairs, monitor lone workers and summon emergency assistance.
Further information about these specialist services can be found under the ‘Care Services’ section of this website.

CHALLENGE – The business challenges facing the company.

Our Cisco Call Manger system required an upgrade as the software version was end of life with Cisco. The cost to upgrade was ÂŁ70,000 as a full hardware replacement was required. Broadacres already knew their long term strategy for telephony was to merge telephony further into our ICT solutions and leave a traditional VOIP handset with PABX system behind.

The upgrade cost gave Broadacres the opportunity to replace the costly Cisco solution to Microsoft Lync 2010 and embrace unified communications. The Cisco system was successfully replaced and Broadacres used Microsoft Lync to provide the business with a handset free telephony service.

The Contact Centre had historical reporting and compared the statistics for comfort that we were still delivering the same high level of service within our Contact Centre for incoming calls. However they did not have real-time information, i.e. a Wallboard to help manage the call queue with the correct number of agents available to answer 85% of calls within 20 seconds.

Broadacres Contact Centre aims to resolve a high number of calls at the first point of contact and these skilled agents have customer emails and orders to process whilst not handling calls through the day.

Broadacres were looking for a Lync Wallboard which would be simple to use and easy to install.

SOLUTION – How Broadacres and AdvaTel partnered to provide a solution.

I read about the AdvaTel solution on your website following a Google search. It seemed to be what we were looking for and following a demonstration online we ordered a trial of the system. The software came with full documentation and took two days to install (including server build time etc.). Once the software was configured the Wallboard was setup tested and live for our Contact within two more days.

RESULTS - The key capabilities of Espera and business benefits to the company.

Espera provided the real time call waiting information we were after which meant that our staff knew how to manage our different client groups better. We now knew how long callers were waiting and therefore when to complete a current call and move on to the next caller. Additionally it meant that we were far better at managing staffing with the correct number of agents logged in as required. Espera enables our staff to self-manage their time and redirect their skills as necessary.

Those in our organisation who don’t actively take client calls are also able to see the real time call waiting information which means that we can help manage the agents to achieve that 85% in 20 seconds!

Espera was easy to install and configure and we were functioning very quickly.

The implementation of Espera was quick and easy, the support documentation and support staff were very helpful. In summary this was a simple solution which has added real value to our Lync Contact Centre solution.

“Espera has been simple to install and added real value to our Lync Contact Centre service…if you’re using Lync Response groups, Espera works really well as a real-time Wallboard solution.” – Chris Fawcett, Information Systems and Technology Manager, Broadacres Housing Association

LEARN MORE
For more information contact AdvaTel www.advatel.com.au or email sales@advatel.com.au

AdvaTel, a privately owned software development company specialising in
software for the telecommunication industry announce the release of Espera.
AdvaTel have had more than 20 years in the call centre real-time and
reporting market place and consequently know call centre needs well.

By using Espera, Response Group staff are empowered to handle each call
more proficiently thereby making correct call handing decisions every time.
This means that supervision can be reduced.

Espera is also valuable to other staff not in the Response Group who may
require information on the standard of the service callers to the organisation
are receiving.

It should be noted that Espera is a fully integrated part of Lync and uses the
existing Lync server and transmission infrastructure, not just an add-on!

Michael Terry, Managing Director of AdvaTel said: “Espera, which is Spanish
for ‘waiting’ will allow users to take advantage of the excellent calls-routing
capability of Microsoft’s Lync. This allows resellers to offer an inexpensive,
fully professional calls-waiting display on users’ PCs directly from Lync.”

Espera Reporter will follow shortly producing a range of historical reports for
Microsoft Lync Response Groups.

Please visit our web site for further information -
http://www.advatel.com.au/content/view/241/242/

AdvaTel, the developers of InTouch, a second generation Unified Communications product developed for the SMB users, today announced a 50 day free trial for all new and installed systems.

Available to all distributors and reseller InTouch requires a 3rd party TAPI licence for the trial period.

InTouch brings together all of a user’s internal and external contacts and telephony and calendar presence to both groups of contacts.

InTouch also offers one click communication be it telephony, SMS, e-mail, IM and in addition has many productivity tools such as “Call Back” and “Pounce” that notify the user when a required (internal or external) becomes available.

A special web site section has been set up at AdvaTel to make it easy for distributors and resellers to apply for the 50 day trial for their clients.

Phillip Wong, AdvaTel’s director of Business Development stated: “we see this is an excellent opportunity for a reseller to re-engage with their installed base and offer them tomorrow’s PBX features today by simply upgrading their existing installation”.

For further information go to http://www.advatel.com.au/free50daytrial

AdvaTel, a platinum DevConnect partner of Avaya are based in Melbourne, Australia and have a second development office in Rostov, Russia. They have been established for 22 years and specialize in the field of software product development for the telecommunications industry.

Contact details: Phillip Wong or sales@advatel.com.au

Sydney, Australia – Distribution Central® Pty Limited, a leader in technology distribution and channel services, has signed on to deliver AdvaTel’s InTouch solution to the Australian and New Zealand reseller channel through its specialist unified communications and IP telephony business unit, Unity Systems®.

“Unity Systems is an ideal choice to take our InTouch solution to market, as they are well established in distributing Avaya and have a strong foot hold in the Small to Medium Business (SMB) IP Office market” said Phillip Wong, Director of Business Development at AdvaTel.

“InTouch is ideal for Avaya’s IP Office market and has been specifically designed with a full understanding of the different needs of SMBs.”

The InTouch software is a cost-effective and simple Unified Communications solution that is not a separate application, but a full integrated Outlook plug-in. It has been designed for SMBs to communicate with internal and external contacts easily across multiple platforms of communication via Avaya IP Office, Microsoft Outlook, Skype, MSN, Yahoo and Lync. Features include federated presence, click to dial, click to IM, click Email, click to SMS, Click to Pounce and view the users calendar status (whether they are in a meeting or out of office). This will ensure users make contact using the right form of communication the first time, which will result in the cost saving benefits and improved productivity.

“InTouch is a complementary fit to our Unity Systems portfolio and will be easy to order alongside our other vendor products, through our custom-designed and built online configuration tool,” said Nick Verykios, Managing Director, Distribution Central.

“Our system automatically shows which add-on products are compatible and makes it simple and efficient for partners to order the right add-on software all on the same quote. We’re offering a complete solution of unified communications with the applications.”

InTouch offers a range of benefits to the SMB customer; in particular it does not require a server or IT department to install and being an Outlook plug-in is always available when required. For more information, visit www.advatel.com.au.

About AdvaTel
AdvaTel, established 20 years ago, is an Australian software company which is a market leader in software solutions. The company provides Unified Communications, Soft Consoles, Telephony and Contact Centre solutions which are distributed via distribution partners throughout the world. Companies ranging from SME to Enterprise levels will enhance productivity and improve efficiencies as a result when deploying the AdvaTel solutions.
www.advatel.com.au

About Distribution Central
Unity Systems™ has been established to supply resellers with unified communications products, support services and regular income streams so they can provide leading-edge communications solutions to their customers while maintaining reliability, compliance, control and optimal performance for their clients.

Headquartered in Sydney and with a large branch office in Melbourne and other offices in Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Auckland, Unity Systems concentrates solely on the Australian and New Zealand marketplace. We rely on our extensive base of reseller partners to cover the geographically dispersed Australian and New Zealand marketplace, and strategic relationships with key support partners allows us to provide support coverage within two hours across Australia and New Zealand.

Unity Systems is a business unit of Distribution CentralÂŽ, a services hub that allows its vendors to benefit from the added value of a well-supported and highly trained channel.

www.unitysystems.com.au

AdvaTel Press Contact
Phillip Wong
Director of Business Development
AdvaTel
Phone: +61 3 8695 8695
Email: phillipw@advatel.com.au

Distribution Central Press Contact
Nick Verykios
Sales & Marketing Director
Distribution Central Pty Limited
Phone: +61 2 8986 5000
Email: nverykios@distributioncentral.com