Zero disruption as IP Telephony and Contact Centre facilities move to new site

Lichfield – 14 February, 2011. NextiraOne, Europe's leading expert in communications services, has provided the technical and solution support required for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water's move into its new offices, the Linea Building in St Mellons, Cardiff. The project included moving Welsh Water's very busy Contact Centre, which handles over 1.2 million calls each year, including the critical blue lamp service for emergency call-outs. NextiraOne helped Welsh Water to complete the phased migration with no delays, failures and no impact to customer service.

Welsh Water's low risk migration strategy was conducted in a carefully planned exercise supported by NextiraOne's communications experts. It involved a phased operation to move over 600 people, many of whom work in business-critical Operations and Billing areas of the organisation. The blue lamp service handles 24/7 emergency calls for situations such as burst pipes and flooding, keeping the public informed with important updates. Welsh Water needed to be sure that this service would function without interruption.

"Welsh Water's migration has been a real success story," commented Peter Hrastelj, Welsh Water's Linea Project Manager , "NextiraOne's technical solution and solution support has helped us to move everything smoothly and efficiently, alongside our own team, and not one of the 110,000 calls in the first 4 weeks since the move has been lost."

The phased migration of staff and technology had to be carried out without impact or interruption to customer services. It required careful design and planning, plus extensive testing. NextiraOne conducted full design/build/test programmes before the migration and carried out load testing, working with a specialist testing partner, Empirix, delivering 40,000 test calls and ensuring full testing of the Contact Centre facilities before any users were migrated.

The move was conducted in three phases, moving the back office administration team of 200 people first, followed by the Billing & Income Contact Centre, with about 180 staff. The final phase involved moving the Operational Activity Centre, the 24-hour emergency service, into the new building. This included the Control Room that monitors all the treatment works, handles incident planning and helps keep the public informed.

NextiraOne was contracted last year to create an advanced communications solution delivering enhanced customer service for Welsh Water's Billing and Operations divisions which handle over 1.2 million calls each year. The solution encompassed a new IP Telephony platform and Customer Interaction system including Contact Centre and voice recording technologies. NextiraOne experts designed an infrastructure based on the Alcatel-Lucent IP Telephony OmniPCX Enterprise platform with a 500+-seat OmniGenesys Contact Centre and Nice™ Perform voice recording solution and analytics package. NextiraOne also maintains and supports the infrastructure and services under a five-year Managed Services contract.

Welsh Water supplies water and sewerage services to household and non-household customers in Wales and some adjoining parts of England. The sixth largest of the ten regulated water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, Welsh Water is responsible for providing over three million people with a continuous, high quality supply of drinking water and for taking away, treating and properly disposing of waste water.

"We had an absolute imperative of not impacting our customer service throughout the move," commented Tim Masters, Head of Performance and Customer Service at Welsh Water, "NextiraOne has been alongside us throughout the migration process and has helped us to keep our services running smoothly and continuously. Their expertise has been impressive."

Steven Skakel, General Manager, NextiraOne UK, said: "Moving a business operation can be a stressful process whatever the size of the organisation. We understood Welsh Water's need for a "business as usual" approach throughout the move and our team was able to provide the technical and solution support to help make this happen. We were able to underpin the process with full test procedures to ensure that continuity could be maintained. We are delighted that the move has gone so successfully thanks to the good working relationship between our team and the in-house team."

A full case study and a video case study of NextiraOne's work with Welsh Water is available at: http://www.nextiraone.eu/uk/references/welsh_water/welsh_water