Solihull, West Midlands 22nd October 2019 – Leading communications integrator, Amillan, has been awarded a place as a supplier on Crown Commercial Service’s (CCS) RM3808 Network Services 2 (NS2). Amillan’s successful application will give public sector organisations easier access to its expertise in telephony and communications technology without having to go through the full EU tendering process.
Amillan is now listed on lot 2 – local connectivity services, lot 5 – IP telephony services, lot 10- unified communications and lot 13 – contact centre services. Amillan were named as a supplier following a highly complicated bid process, where applicants were evaluated for multiple service lots, based on multiple criteria, including service offerings, implementation skills, service delivery, customer references, and experience.
Patrick Daly, Operations Director, Amillan, said: “We are delighted to have won a place on the NS2 framework. This award gives us access to an expanded pipeline of public sector procurement opportunities and will enable us to transact business much more quickly and seamlessly with existing and new public sector customers. It will help streamline the whole process both for us and our clients.”
The NS2 framework is for the provision of telecommunications and network services and can be used by the whole of the UK Public Sector and their associated bodies and agencies, the voluntary sector, charities, and/or other private organisations acting as managing agents or procuring on behalf of the public sector delivering services of a public nature.
NS2 aims to simplify and speed up communications and networking procurement for public sector organisations, with pre-defined and agreed contract terms and conditions and a shortlist of pre-approved suppliers providing a wide range of services. The framework will run until 2023 and CCS expect public sector organisations to spend £5 billion on it over its four-year duration.
About Amillan
Amillan is a leading solutions integrator delivering unified communications, IP voice and data networking, contact centre, ICT infrastructure, robotic process automation and mobility solutions on-premise or in the cloud. For more information, please visit, www.amillan.co.uk
About Crown Commercial Service
Crown Commercial Service (CCS) is an Executive Agency of the Cabinet Office, supporting the public sector to achieve maximum commercial value when procuring common goods and services.
To find out more about CCS, visit: www.crowncommercial.gov.uk
Follow us on Twitter: @gov_procurement
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/2827044
An alliance focused on driving closer ties and enhanced collaboration and connectivity for customer-facing organisations
Enghouse Interactive has signed leading communications integrator, Amillan, as an elite member of its EMEA partner programme. The new agreement marks an expansion to an existing long-term relationship between the companies.
As a gold partner, Amillan will sell, market and deliver a range of Enghouse Interactive products, including its flagship Enghouse Interactive Communications Center (“EICC”) solution and Quality Management Suite (QMS). In addition, Amillan will have access to a range of Enghouse resources including account planning, marketing and lead generation alongside pre-sales support.
Patrick Daly, Operations Director, Amillan, said: “Enghouse Interactive and Amillan complement each other well. Enghouse’s contact centre solutions are intuitive, can be delivered to scale and have a great reputation for reliability in the marketplace. We have also been impressed with the speed at which Enghouse has developed its communications solutions portfolio to meet customer requirements.”
The strength of Enghouse Interactive’s relationship with Microsoft is important to Amillan. The communications integrator was originally introduced to Enghouse by Microsoft. Today, Enghouse’s partnership with Microsoft and its understanding of the Microsoft product roadmap are key to Enghouse and Amillan winning business together.
Another advantage to Amillan is that Enghouse’s products are platform-agnostic. Their interoperability with other leading UC and PBX platforms from companies such as Cisco and Avaya opens up new avenues for Amillan to explore.
The two companies have already achieved success together primarily across the education, housing and local authority sectors. The new partnership will allow them to further build on this.
“People are key to any partnership,” continued Daly. “We have an open working relationship with a similar ‘can do’ attitude and a drive to win business, based on delivering excellent customer service.”
Jas Jhita, Channel Director, Enghouse Interactive, said: “We are delighted to welcome Amillan as a gold partner within our EMEA partner programme. They share our vision of communications and contact centre solutions and delivering enhanced collaboration and connectivity for customers. Amillan has demonstrated its commitment to our solutions by investing in training and quickly becoming self-sufficient in sales, delivery and support.”
Looking to the future, Amillan plans to expand its portfolio of Enghouse solutions. There is increased demand for Enghouse’s Contact Center Enterprise solution and great potential in leveraging Enghouse Interactive’s Communications Portal for elements such as app development, self-service bots, robotic process automation and AI. Moving forwards, both partners are committed to further exploring the opportunities that automation and AI present to drive benefits for businesses today.
65% of guests use your Wi-Fi within 7 minutes of arriving at your hotel. So how can you make their first experience an excellent one?
Did you know that your hotel guests would have a hard time choosing between wireless access and air conditioning in your hotel? And, that the majority of your guests would also pick wireless over food? Yes, you read that right – Arbitrip’s 2017 report found wireless service and air conditioning tied as the top guest amenity with breakfast coming in second.
Simply providing wireless connectivity is no longer enough. Guests expect fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi, to the point that they may choose another hotel if your network does not provide sufficient connectivity for their devices. If your hotel network is frequently the source of guest complaints, you are not alone. Many hotels have aging networks that were not built to handle the high network bandwidth they need today, which is largely due to the sheer number of mobile devices that arrive with each guest.
Upgrading your hotel network: Happy guests, productive employees and new services
When you upgrade your hotel network to meet (or hopefully exceed) today’s demands, you give your property a competitive edge. Your guests will be happy with the super-fast wireless, and they will be thrilled by the new services – check-in/checkout, order a drink while at the pool or turn the lights on in their room before entering – that your hotel can now offer with smartphone apps. Your staff can also now communicate and coordinate with each other, as well as guests, using mobile technology from anywhere on the property.
Here are five things to consider when upgrading your hotel’s network:
1. Coverage
In the past, wireless coverage was only needed in a few places – the guest rooms and maybe the lobby. However, today’s guests expect coverage everywhere in the hotel – even pool areas and the parking garage. And employees need to be able to communicate from the housekeeping closet or the maintenance shed at the back of the property.
2. Traffic patterns
Your guests and employees move around constantly while accessing the network, resulting in unpredictable traffic patterns. And they expect the same level of connectivity wherever they are on the property.
3. Throughput
It’s no longer email and Facebook that your guests want to access. They want to use multimedia applications such as streaming video from wherever they are at the moment – their room, the swimming pool, even the golf cart. The result – high bandwidth use.
4. Security
Guests trust your network with their work documents, banking information, travel plans and more, and they expect a network free of viruses and data breaches. This becomes even more challenging to ensure with so many different people and devices accessing your network.
5. Levels of service/access
Not everyone on your hotel property needs the same network access. Guests, employees, management, IT staff – all have different needs. By having the ability to define multiple user types, you can create a different environment on the same infrastructure for each user type, which improves security and service, and helps control bandwidth. Hotels can also provide VIP guest access with special perks – faster service, more bandwidth, or access to premium services or applications.
Contact Amillan today to discuss our range of Hospitality Communications Technology Solutions
About AELTC
The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) needs little introduction. In July each year, it takes centre stage on the sports calendar, playing host to the Wimbledon Grandslam tennis tournament. It has become an iconic venue and over the years it’s changed and modernised while still keeping its classical elegance – setting it apart from any other sports venue.
The Grounds consist of 18 grass courts (including Centre Court and No.1 Court), eight American Clay courts and five indoor courts, two Greenset Velvelux and three Greenset Trophy. In Aorangi Park, there are 20 grass courts for practice before and during The Championships and two green acrylic courts. The total area, including the Club’s car parks, covers over 42 acres.
Our Relationship
For over 20 years, Amillan has worked with the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC).
During this time, Amillan has provided the ICT infrastructure a number of projects that have changed the face of Wimbledon and gained applause from tennis fans all around the world.
Given the nature of the organisation, timescales for delivering projects at Wimbledon are always tight. Even in the most complex scenarios, Amillan has always delivered on time and provided enough flexibility to allow for anyunforeseen challenges or amendments to the overall project plan.
As a supplier, Amillan is very proud of its association with Wimbledon and the length of the relationship is testament to the quality of the service and solutions provided by Amillan. Looking ahead to some exciting times, Amillan is committed to providing Wimbledon with new solutions and services to help it to embrace the new world of communications, and continue to re-affirm its position as one of the most iconic sporting venues in the world.
About ForViva
ForViva is a force for good. We challenge inequalities and make a difference to people’s lives. We’re about profit for purpose and this means we reinvest profits from across the Group to have a positive impact and create vibrant and safe communities. The entire ForViva Group is united behind one shared vision: Improved Lives. ForViva sets the standard and offers direction, allowing group members Liberty and ForHousing to achieve their missions.
ForHousing is a progressive landlord that provides quality homes and places, making more things possible for more people. It owns and manages more than 24,000 homes and places, improving lives by delivering real change and making more things possible for more people.
Liberty focuses on being the go-to people for property services, thinking ahead to deliver personal, smart and altogether better property services across gas, repairs, maintenance and construction. By working for good, working together and focusing on simplicity, we make things happen.
The Project
Amillan’s solution is built upon Enghouse’s EICC, a market leading contact centre platform in the housing sector. Multi-channel capability will give customers greater choice in how they engage with ForViva, with seamless telephone, e-mail, SMS, live webchat and social media communication channels all supported by the platform.
The chosen solution will also enable more efficient agent management and improvements in service quality via integrated call and screen recording, speech analytics and Teleopti workforce management modules.
About Warwickshire County Council
Warwickshire County Council provides for a community population of over 500,000 with public services, healthcare, education and social care. As an organisation, there are 4,000 users across 15+ sites, with many mobile users across the county.
Like many local authorities, Warwickshire was challenged to continue to deliver excellent public services on increasingly tighter budgets. To achieve this the Council recognised they must make their services more efficient, integrated and make the best possible use of new technologies and innovation.
The Project
‘Project Connect’ is Warwickshire County Council’s strategic initiative to implement a new IP Telephony solution in support of its ‘Smarter Working’ agenda. The aim is to ‘Empower every member of staff to connect with others where and when and how they need.
Amillan is currently in the process of deploying a new Alcatel-Lucent OpenTouch solution to the Council’s 4,000 users. Key success factors for the Council are to provide a cohesive experience from any user device, as well as integrating with several existing messaging applications including Google Apps, legacy IP telephony, data connectivity and centralised reporting.
About Dixons Carphone plc
Dixons Carphone plc is Europe’s leading specialist electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company, employing over 42,000 people in eight countries. Dixons Carphone’s primary brands include Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse in the UK & Ireland.
With a full range of services and support, they make it easy for their customers to discover, choose and enjoy the right technology for them, throughout the life of the product.
The Relationship
We began working with Dixons International in 2001 when Amillan was chosen to provide a corporate telephony solution. Over time, Amillan became more involved in the business and introduced new technologies and solutions to DSG as their business grew and expanded across the UK and into Europe.
Today, Amillan provides the voice infrastructure which supports the following:
– 700 Currys PC World stores
– 17 administration sites
– 3,000 agent contact centre
– 22,000 users
Support is provided 24×7 as part of a managed services contract and Amillan operates a branded help desk for stores personnel to assist them in the day-to-day running of their retail outlets.
About Imagination
For over a quarter of a century, Imagination has created technology that sits at the heart of many of the world’s most iconic devices – from the first 3D graphics accelerators to gaming consoles and smartphones.
Imagination is a strong, independent IP company. They pride themselves on their consistent focus and creating win-win products in conjunction with our customers. Imagination’s powerful, cutting-edge designs are driving the digital revolution forward by enabling their partners to build world-changing electronics.
The Project
Due to substantial growth, Imagination identified the need for a new office at its headquarters site in Kings Langley. For the new facility, a data networking solution was required that would allow multiple system profiles, allowing users access to pre-specified areas of the network. Recommended to Imagination Technologies by a consultancy firm, Amillan provided technical advice and a bespoke design to meet the demands and level of service specified by the client. Amillan’s fully integrated LAN and Wi-Fi solution supports advanced security features such as wireless intrusion protection, policy enforcement firewalling, rogue access point detection and prevention.
About Trent & Dove Housing
Trent & Dove Housing offers well maintained, affordable homes across East Staffordshire, South Derbyshire and North West Leicestershire. This includes 6,000 properties, ranging from sheltered accommodation to family homes and everything in between.
Trent & Dove housing are driven to make a difference in people’s lives and reduce homelessness in the region. Their aspiration is to be an organisation of over 10,000 homes by 2022. By providing affordable homes and a wide range of supporting services they enable people and communities to thrive and enjoy life.
The housing association identified a need for improved reporting from its telephony system to ensure the organisation delivers the services that it offers to its clients. This included peak-time staffing of phones, extended service hours, outbound calling and ‘first point of contact’ resolution. In addition, a new LAN solution was required by Trent & Dove Housing, to both support the communication solution and protect against system failures that would result in SLA failures for the housing association.
The Solution
Amillan implemented Unified Communications and Contact Centre platform with a total of 213 users and 20 contact centre agents, and a replacement LAN solution to support it. The Unified Communications solution provides a call distribution system operating across all sites by routing calls to the first available qualified staff member in the shortest time.
Amillan also replaced Trent & Dove Housing’s multiple telephony systems with a single solution distributed across all sites, which provided a platform to support hot-desking, home working, remote contact centre agents, audio and video conferencing. The solution also gave the housing association a single, centralised management system for their communication platform.
The LAN solution provided abundant network bandwidth for voice, data and UC, with the additional requirement to support video over IP. Amillan designed and implemented a network that is resilient so in the event of an appliance failure, the fibre route will be maintained, and Trent & Dove Housing’s SLAs will not be affected.
After just three months of the system going live, Trent & Dove Housing reported a 50% reduction in time taken to answer calls; from 45 seconds to just 22 seconds. In addition, the average call length was reduced by 25%, helping Trent & Dove achieve their objective of faster call resolution. This improvement in answering time also reduced the abandoned call rate from 25% previously, to 8% on the new solution.
Amillan’s solution also provided a reduction in costs for Trent & Dove Housing. With the single system replacing multiple legacy systems, the ongoing maintenance costs were greatly reduced. The rationalised solution provided Trent & Dove Housing with a central management system which reduced operational costs and simplified the administration of the communications system.
“We selected Amillan’s solution on the basis of the wealth of features the solution provides, which we felt would increase our levels of customer service and boost the productivity of our staff.”
About Halfords
Halfords is the UK’s leading retailer in car maintenance, car enhancement and leisure, including cycles, accessories and outdoor leisure equipment. It differentiates itself through its national store portfolio, a broad range of products, competitive pricing, a fitting service for products sold, customer service and a strong brand. There are also over 460 stores across the UK with a number of sites also extending across Europe.
Halfords were undertaking a store refurbishment program to keep stores looking fresh and modern and to help attract new customers from the growing number of car and cycle enthusiasts.
Halfords wanted to replace telephone systems with a single vendor solution for all refurbished stores whilst maintaining the systems of older stores. A secure broadband connection was required in all stores was also required to manage energy systems, in order to reduce running costs and make stores more economical.
The Solution
Amillan provided a range of solutions and services to Halfords to address the communications and infrastructure challenges in the business.
As stores were refurbished, Amillan implemented the latest in IP telephony to replace existing systems, standardising them across the UK. This allowed stores to be more easily managed and administrate centrally.
In addition to this, Amillan also installed broadband at 80 sites to support Halfords’ energy management system. Providing the full range of communications and infrastructure allowed Amillan to help Halfords make the full use of their technology.
To ensure Halfords with the piece of mind that systems would continue to work smoothly, Amillan also provided maintenance for all telephone systems. This was made possible by Amillan’s high level of skills and expertise of its engineers.
“Our relationship with Amillan has allowed us to make a gradual migration to new telephony solutions while protecting our investment in existing systems. We work in true partnership and Amillan take a proactive approach in our business, suggesting ways in which we can enhance our performance with better communications.”
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