The pandemic forced many businesses to adopt cloud-based communications platforms virtually overnight when it struck two years ago.
As restrictions begin to lift at different paces around the world, a lot of these companies have now turned their attention to long term cloud strategies, with unified communications as a service (UCaaS) a central component of this.
The Learning People is one such business that has set itself up for future growth and global expansion, in partnership with Avaya.
The company provides career training and counselling to more than 35,000 students, particularly around the skills required to be successful in the technology industry.
Speaking to UC Today, Andy Winstanley, Head of Operations at the Learning People, said that the business had previously operated with archaic technology such as PC towers, desktop handsets and on-premises infrastructure.
The Learning People, like many other businesses, opted for a Zoom subscription when under pressure to find a solution for remote working.
The enforced move to a cloud system opened his eyes to the benefits of such platforms.
“This meant that our consultants were able to continue working, which we’re proud to have achieved during a time when so many people were losing their jobs, and many were turning to the online training we offer,” Winstanley said.
“We knew we were looking for a solution under a cloud-based model – one compatible with physical handsets when we needed them, but something to keep us connected wherever we were.
“We were also discovering that experiences matter and to provide the best employee and customer experience possible beyond the pandemic, we needed a more flexible and feature-rich unified communications solution”
A key element of the move to the cloud was retiring on-premises infrastructure – something that was a big challenge for countless businesses, according to Neal McMahon, Regional Sales Leader for UK&I at Avaya.
“Like many organisations, aging, largely inflexible systems caused a real problem at the beginning of lockdown restrictions for the Learning People,” he explained.
“Trying to balance corporate communication with personal mobile usage provides additional challenges and the increasing demand to work remotely simply wasn’t possible on the existing platforms – especially as they have a dispersed workforce across international locations.”
Cloud is Not Enough
Despite the benefits of moving UCaaS with Zoom, Winstanley said that it soon became clear that the Learning People workforce was missing important elements of the previous on-premises system.
These features largely focused on ensuring that the business delivers a good experience to its customers.
“Our primary concern was figuring out how to maintain our former analytics and reporting while integrating more devices and having a remote staff,” he explained.
“Zoom was easy to set up – which was important to keep us functional, but visibility into call quality didn’t exist and we needed this to continue our high standard of training.
“Zoom allowed us to monitor call time, but without insights into quality, we couldn’t track against our KPIs. We needed more back-end functionality.”
The Learning People and Avaya
It was at this stage that the Learning People and Avaya started conversations about putting a cloud system in place that would let it deliver a good experience to its customers while also allowing for future growth.
The business already had offices in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and was in the process of expanding internationally.
“We worked closely with the customer to identify their specific requirements so that the most suitable solution could be recommended,” McMahon said.
“We also provided a proof of concept so that the customer could test our solution in their own environment to ensure integration into their back-office systems and gain reassurance of the solution’s capability, specifically regarding reporting and compliance options, prior to committing to an order”
Avaya and the Learning People ultimately arrived at Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral as the right fit for the business’ needs.
Avaya Cloud Office is part of Avaya’s OneCloud portfolio and bundles voice, video, messaging, file sharing and task management into one subscription.
The Learning People has rolled out 100 IP phones, along with Avaya IP handsets, as part of the project – 85 in the UK and 15 in Ireland – and opened a new office with a small team in France.
Winstanley said that the speed of the rollout was “a major factor” in the decision to go with Avaya, along with the more advanced capabilities its platform provides.
“We were drawn to the ability to record calls, for analytics and training, but an added selling point is the ability pause call recording for compliance,” he explained.
“Sometimes, we need to ask for sensitive information and we don’t want this portion recorded for anyone to find.
“The suite of reporting and scheduling functions was attractive too, since we needed to be able to manage key performance indicator for individual team members and managers.”
The Future is Hybrid
It seems inevitable that most businesses in a position to adopt a hybrid working culture will do so when pandemic restrictions allow them to.
Avaya’s McMahon said that this has only accelerated the mass migration to the cloud.
“We see a growing trend of customers migrating to cloud technology to take advantage of a more flexible, globally available solution that provides the resilience and management often lacking with traditional platforms,” he said.
“While several organisations turned to an additional service to help in the first stages of lock-down, many are now reviewing their overall communications strategy to create a single solution providing a seamless experience for their staff”
For more information about how Avaya Cloud Office can help your business, please visit Avaya.
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