Guildford, London – Avaya, a global leader in enterprise communications systems, software and services, today announced that Umbro, the English football brand, has upgraded its communications system to a pure Avaya environment. Umbro selected Avaya Communication Manager as the basis for all voice communications moving forward.

The upgrade aligns Umbro, a subsidiary of NIKE Inc, with the rest of NIKE’s global network and is expected to save the company thousands of pounds a year in reduced admin and phone charges.

One of Umbro’s first major football kits was made for Manchester City in 1934, a kit they won the FA Cup in. As part of a move to a new head office Umbro wanted to take its strong football heritage with it but was less keen on moving its legacy communications system. Instead Umbro opted for a new Avaya system to replace an older PBX which had reached capacity. It took the Avaya team just three months to get the system up and running, without any disruption to service.

Danny Healey, IT operations manager, Umbro, said “Moving to a pure Avaya communications environment is good business sense, plain and simple. We are now aligned with our parent company and expect to see a significant reduction in our phone bill.  Regardless of which office we speak to globally the call can now be routed through the Avaya PBX network to ensure we pay the least amount possible for that call.”
He continued, “The installation was a real team effort. Avaya were with us every step of the way. To turn a new building from a shell, into a fully functioning office environment is no mean feat. The team did a perfect job.”

The new system will dramatically reduce the amount of time and resource invested in managing Umbro communications. New users can be added in seconds rather than minutes and day-to-day management of the system can be done easily via a Windows based interface rather than requiring timely manual configuration.

The system upgrade has also helped Umbro future proof its communications infrastructure, making capacity issues a thing of the past. Since Avaya Communication Manager can scale from just 2 to 36,000 extensions, additional staff and functionality can be quickly and easily added without compromising the systems or its reliability.

Lee Shorten, Managing Director, UK and Ireland, Avaya, said, “Umbro has embraced the benefits Avaya can deliver and we fully expect them to see a return on investment in under two years. If they continue to innovate in the way that they plan their groundbreaking attitude will extend well beyond the football field.”

The successful role out of the Avaya systems has encouraged Umbro to look at additional cost and functionality benefits the system can deliver. Future plans include the installation of soft phones on laptops to give mobile and remote workers easy access to their desk phone contacts and functions regardless of location. The move will also help Umbro to reduce the communication charges associated with mobile workers.