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.”
Unified Communications – James Cropper
By Amillan Limited, Your Trusted Managed Services Provider
James Cropper is a globally recognised manufacturer of advanced materials and specialist paper products, based in the UK with operations spanning over 50 countries. With a strong reputation for innovation, sustainability, and quality, the business supports sectors ranging from luxury packaging to aerospace composites. Amillan has extensive experience working in the manufacturing vertical, with a deep understanding of the sector’s specific communication challenges and operational requirements.
The Challenge
As James Cropper continued its innovation-led growth strategy, the company required a robust and flexible communications platform that could support collaboration across multiple global locations. Their legacy systems
lacked scalability and did not offer the level of integration or visibility needed to support modern workflows—particularly in support of their R&D and international client engagement teams.
The Solution
Amillan delivered a comprehensive, fully managed Unified Communications and infrastructure solution designed to meet James Cropperʼs multi-site, high-security, and safety-critical requirements. The deployment combined state-of-the-art IP telephony, collaboration tools, mobility services, and resilient data networking into a single, integrated environment. A cornerstone of the project was the consultative design and deployment of James Cropperʼs LAN and WLAN infrastructure. During the pre-consultative exercise, Amillan carried out a full wireless profile of the busy manufacturing site, identifying potential sources of interference and developing a bespoke design tailored to the operational environment.
This approach ensured that the deployed solution could:
Amillan successfully implemented a new enterprise data networking solution at the main UK campus, delivered on time and within budget. Building on this success, Amillan supported the expansion of the LAN and WLAN infrastructure to remote sites worldwide, creating a consistent, secure, and scalable global network environment.
Key Elements of the Solution
Data Network Infrastructure
This approach ensured that the deployed solution could:
Amillan successfully implemented a new enterprise data networking solution at the main UK campus, delivered on time and within budget. Building on this success, Amillan supported the expansion of the LAN and WLAN infrastructure to remote sites worldwide, creating a consistent, secure, and scalable global network environment.
Cabling Infrastructure
A high-availability telephony core was deployed using a virtualised architecture, providing redundancy, scalability, and future-proofing for James Cropperʼs expanding global operations.
Resilient Virtualised Unified Communications Platform
A high-availability telephony core was deployed using a virtualised architecture, providing redundancy, scalability, and future-proofing for James Cropperʼs expanding global operations.
Full IP Telephony Across All Locations
Modern IP handsets and soft clients replaced the legacy systems, delivering consistent call quality, centralised management, and the flexibility to adapt to different working environments.
UCaaS and CPaaS With Microsoft Teams Integration
A UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) platform was deployed as a softphone and a CPaaS ( Collaboration Platform as a Service), offering presence, instant messaging, audio, and video capabilities. Partial integration with Microsoft Teams ensured a seamless user experience for employees already working within the Microsoft 365 environment.
Full-Site DECT Coverage
Wireless DECT infrastructure provided robust site-wide mobility, enabling employees to stay connected across manufacturing floors, warehouses, and office spaces with guaranteed voice quality.
Man-Down Services For Lone Workers and Hazardous Areas
Specialist DECT handsets with man-down functionality were introduced to safeguard lone workers and staff operating in potentially dangerous areas, automatically triggering alerts in the event of falls or inactivity.
Deployment and Support
Amillan carried out a full network readiness assessment before implementation, ensuring the infrastructure could support the increased demands of voice, video, and mobility services. Post-deployment, Amillan provided comprehensive user training and continues to deliver 24/7 proactive monitoring and support, giving James Cropper centralised visibility, operational resilience, and peace of mind.
Benefits Delivered
Customer Testimonials
“The support from Amillan has transformed the way we collaborate across global teams. Their understanding of our sector and proactive support model has been key to the smooth rollout and ongoing success of our communications strategy”
— Quote from Alistair Belshaw, IT infrastructure & Security Manager, James Cropper
“Working with an innovation-led manufacturer like James Cropper is a perfect fit for our approach. Our goal was to deliver a secure, scalable platform that supports their collaborative workflows and future growth.”
— Quote from Darren Greally, Account, Sales Director, Amillan
Your network is facing a rapidly evolving threat landscape full of modern applications, exploits, malware, and attack strategies that can avoid traditional methods of detection. Threats are delivered via applications that:
Dynamically hop ports
Use non-standard ports
Tunnel within other applications
Hide within proxies, SSL or other types of encryption
Additionally, your enterprise is exposed to targeted and customised malware, which can easily pass undetected through traditional antivirus solutions.
Many of the above may be stopped by your existing firewall solution, but how many aren’t?
Amillan can now offer all customers a free Security Life-Cycle Report, to help you pinpoint exactly where the holes are in your data network security.
By placing a test appliance on your network and passively monitoring traffic for one week, Amillan can produce a custom risk assessment including real exposure to threats, user behavior, and application usage, helping you better understand the cyber risks your organisation faces.
Contact Amillan today for more information and to arrange your free Security Life-Cycle Report.
Home working, be it part or full time, increases the flexibility of labour while reducing its cost. The ubiquity of high speed internet connections gives an unprecedented flexibility to deploy work more effectively. This technology evolution also has a deep impact on Western countries economics, environment and on enterprise productivity.
Leading management consultants have found that employers expect to use more part time, temporary employees for an optimal use of their permanent workforce. Home working technologies will make it possible to hire a temporary workforce on an ad-hoc basis. This added flexibility could decrease the labour cost by nearly one third in the U.S. and Europe, helping to narrow the off-shored labour cost differences.
Another key factor is the impact on the environment. Home working has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 million tons in 2020. Alcatel-Lucent has calculated that the roll out of home working in one of its subsidiaries of 900 people, home working 50 days a year, had saved over 2,534,000 kilometres (1,575,000 miles), which is the equivalent of driving 63 times around the planet. It saved 318,200 litres (70,000 gallons) of gas.
Each employee also saved money: €231 (£183) each year and time by avoiding more than 100 hours driving during rush hours.
In addition, HR found that remote employees were more productive and satisfied across generations. GenY enjoyed a better work/life balance, and it helped retain and maintain the productivity of 55+ workers. For high performers, setting up their own work while working from any place was liberating and empowering.
What changes in work practices when an employee becomes a home worker? Tasks workers will access their business applications from their laptops while enjoying the voice quality of their IP phone which is just another extension of the telephony system. Knowledge workers will often prefer to collaborate through their PC, enjoying additional media such as IM and video and sharing presentations on line with colleagues, customers and partners. Lastly, travelling knowledge workers will, in many cases, prefer to collaborate from a tablet PC.
But if work is less and less a place we go to, communication and collaboration tools of choice should have the availability they have in the office, providing great ergonomics and be easy to use.
Amillan supports a Unified Communications approach, allowing workers to unleash productivity by being able to work more flexible and efficient. Contact Us today to see how we can implement UC for your business.
This article originally appeared on The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Blog and is published with permission
PBX hacking is big business for criminals, with fraud losses estimated to be in the region of $4.4 billion. This type of fraud does not discriminate on size of organisation and the costs to businesses can be substantial.
Toll fraud – the unauthorised use of a communication system by hackers – is a method increasingly used by organised criminals who realise that while businesses are often up-to-speed in protecting their networks and PCs against sophisticated attacks, their communication solutions often prove to be a soft target. Organisations usually only discover they have become victims when presented with the bill!
Key indicators to look out for are a high volume of calls placed to international numbers from the same internal phone; a peak of long distance, out of hours calls; or an alert from your telephone operator showing multiple short-duration calls to a premium rate number. By this time you have probably been hacked.
Here are the top three factors that put your business ‘at risk’ to hacking: ageing systems, outdated security policies and careless configuration – particularly when it comes to integrating VoIP phones.
But if you answer ‘Yes’ to any of the questions below, then your business is at risk:
It is in response to this growing menace we have introduced a Toll Prevention Audit service to help companies introduce best practices and protection mechanisms to avoid many toll fraud scenarios. Here are the key elements of introducing best practice to help reduce toll fraud:
Businesses who apply the right protection mechanisms can make themselves much less appealing to fraudsters, and by following these simple steps it’s possible to ensure your communications solution is not a easy target.
This article originally appeared on The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Blog and is re-published with permission
Since the late 80’s ISDN has been the de-facto telephony connectivity solution of choice; however, with no significant development in over a decade and a BT switch-off date set for 2025, it’s time to retire your ISDN for good.
Getting on for 2 million channels being used today, SIP trunking is fast-becoming the obvious replacement for traditional ISDN services. Aside from the significant financial savings possible with SIP, this has been driven by both the need for a more flexible approach to ‘voice’ and the requirements of Unified Communications.
1 – Save money on call costs and line rental
SIP delivers less costly, more reliable connectivity than ISDN over an IP connection. It can save up to 50% on line rentals and 25% or more on call costs.
2- Free internal calls and great features
Perfect for medium or large organisations with multiple sites, not only will you save on your line rental and call costs, but you’ll get free internal calls within your organisation and a whole host of great features.
3- Scale up and down when you want
SIP trunks are ideal if you are moving, upsizing or downsizing and want to keep your existing numbers. Scale up lines during busy periods and back down again afterwards. You can add lines, take them away, split calls at any time. You are always in control.
4- Built-in Business Continuity
SIP trunks can handle emergencies easily. They are inherently disaster recovery / business continuity ready, letting you reroute calls to an alternative location quickly and easily.
5- Compatible with Skype for Business
Our SIP trunks are integration tested and approved to interoperate with Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business, allowing you to directly connect to the platform to make external calls.
Contact Amillan today to learn more about our SIP Connectivity Solutions.
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