Spirit of Tasmania

Smooth sailing for Spirit of Tasmania

Background

Established in 1985 and wholly owned by the Tasmanian Government, TT-Line Company Pty Ltd (trading as Spirit of Tasmania) provides passenger, vehicle and freight services between Tasmania and mainland Australia using two vessels – Spirit of Tasmania I and II.

Spirit of Tasmania employs over 500 staff across four locations, including two land based locations; comprising of the Head Office in East Devonport in Tasmania, which also houses a 30 seat contact centre, the Station Pier office in Port Melbourne, and the two ships themselves.

The Challenge

With their existing Telstra Spectrum telephony system due to be disabled, Spirit of Tasmania were seeking a new, modern corporate telephony and contact centre solution.

The existing system was proving costly and cumbersome, with contact centre consultants limited in their ability to deliver a rich, interactive experience to customers. Staff had to perform a number of inefficient manual processes such as cross referencing with the online booking system, plus there was a disparate mix of vendor technologies with some offering little or no support.

As such, the new enterprise-grade solution needed to be scalable, resilient and easily managed, as well as meet the functionality and operational capability that Spirit of Tasmania requires for a minimum of 10 years – both within Australia and internationally.

Primarily an IP telephony solution, another requirement of the new system was to also have the capacity to integrate email, instant messaging, collaboration and video conferencing features.

What’s more, Spirit of Tasmania needed the solution within a tight timeframe due to the upcoming tourist season, plus minimising the cost of ongoing maintenance was a high priority.

“The solution has enabled us to streamline our processes, reduce complexity across disparate geographical locations, ensure business continuity, and minimise both our call and network costs. Most importantly, organisational collaboration has taken a considerable move forward, allowing workers to communicate and collaborate more efficiently and more intuitively than ever before.”
Tim Harlow, Chief Information Officer

The Solution

Following a comprehensive and thorough evaluation process in partnership with Cisco, Data^#3 was announced as the successful provider to implement Spirit of Tasmania’s new telephony and contact centre solution.

Data^#3 was chosen because of their industry reputation, professionalism and capabilities, plus Spirit of Tasmania identified and recognised a number of strategic benefits in selecting a single provider for both their contact centre and enterprise telephony requirements. Spirit of Tasmania already had a significant investment with Cisco’s UCS servers and could see the benefits of using similar hardware to manage a Cisco phone system. What’s more, they could continue to use HP branded network switches with the new Cisco system, meaning the value of existing infrastructure could continue to be leveraged.

As such, Data^#3 proposed that a new Cisco Collaboration and Contact Centre solution be implemented across the company. The basis of this solution was a proven enterprise-class IP telephony system that’s one of the most widely deployed corporate telephony systems in the world.

However, the Cisco solution extends far beyond telephony – it offers a rich, integrated collaboration experience that can be tailored to meet the requirements of modern businesses. This includes instant messaging and presence, voice and video communications, web conferencing, and content sharing.

The Cisco Collaboration and Contact Centre solution is end-to-end Cisco, comprising Cisco endpoints, Cisco gateways, Cisco UCS servers and Cisco software. The major benefit of a single vendor solution is the knowledge that the components have been thoroughly tested together and that there is a single point of support. In the unlikely event of problems arising, this will provide Spirit of Tasmania with a single contact to resolve issues.

Furthermore, the solution consists of a number of redundant physical and virtual components installed on Cisco UCS servers (or suitable alternate hardware) installed with the VMware vSphere hypervisor. These VMware hosts are capable of supporting additional virtual machines to allow for expansion and additional services to be added in the future.

The components are distributed between Spirit of Tasmania’s head office site in Tasmania and Station Pier terminal in Victoria, as well as two geographically separate remote data centres to provide a completely geographically redundant solution, with core services able to withstand a complete disaster at either of the data centres.

The core services of the solution comprise:

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) for call control
• Cisco Unity Connection for voicemail
• CUCM Instant Messaging and Presence (IM&P)
• Cisco Unified Contact Centre Express

A Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) gateway in both Tasmania and Victoria enables calls to exit the system via the most appropriate gateway, potentially saving STD charges, and also provides redundancy by eliminating a single point of failure. Inbound calls can also be redirected to a functioning gateway in the event of a failure.

The Outcome

In partnership with Cisco, Data^#3 provided Spirit of Tasmania with a modern telephony system for their enterprise and contact centre needs in both Victoria and Tasmania.

The Cisco Contact Centre solution now supports multi-channel access through voice, video, email, web chat, and social media interfaces. Additionally, the Cisco product range includes in-depth reporting and analysis, as well as workforce optimisation and management solutions that provide a holistic contact centre solution.

Contact centre staff now have access to up-to-the-minute data and information at their fingertips, enabling them to deliver a faster, more responsive service to customers. Internal processes have also been optimised and streamlined, with employees in different locations able to connect, collaborate and share information more readily. This not only creates efficiencies across the business, but also enhances user satisfaction and leads to a more professional customer-facing approach.

Importantly, Spirit of Tasmania now has a reliable, secure and future-proof technology platform upon which to optimise and scale their operations to meet growing consumer demands.

“The solution has enabled us to streamline our processes, reduce complexity across disparate geographical locations, ensure business continuity, and minimise both our call and network costs. Most importantly, organisational collaboration has taken a considerable move forward, allowing workers to communicate and collaborate more efficiently and more intuitively than ever before.” says Tim Harlow, Chief Information Officer.

“The professionalism and expertise of Peter James (Data^#3 Project Manager), Chris Day (Data^#3 Lead Technician/Consultant) and their teams has been outstanding. From day one, they’ve added value to the partnership and have taken a genuine consultative approach to ensure the solution delivers exactly what we need.”

“We see Data^#3 as a trusted advisor and valued partner, and feel very confident moving forward with them as we expand on the features and capabilities of the system.”

Ultimately, the solution demonstrates Data^#3’s experience and capabilities in implementing corporate telephony systems and contact centre solutions for a range of different organisations, regardless of size and location.

Download the Spirit of Tasmania Case Study.

To learn more about how Data^#3 can assist your organisation, call 1300 23 28 23, or Enquire Online.