4-page Case Study - Posted 10/15/2007

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Glasgow Cultural Enterprises

Leading Concert Venue Connects Employees in Real Time to Improve Customer Service

Glasgow Cultural Enterprises (GCE) manages world-class music and events venues, including the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and Glasgow City Halls. The company’s employees work in a number of buildings and are often away from their desks. To ensure fast responses to customer queries and to improve internal communications, the company deployed Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007. Using the technology, employees can see if their colleagues are available and contact them in real time using e-mail messages, instant messages, or calls from their traditional desk phones. This helps them improve service for the public, and the events team can respond faster to requests from corporate clients. GCE plans to use the technology to support IP telephony internally and offer high-value videoconferencing services to its corporate clients.

Situation

We are able to work together more effectively using Office Communicator 2007. This is mainly because we can now see if colleagues are at their desks or working in other GCE buildings.  Cliff Brown IT Technician Glasgow Cultural Enterprises

Because GCE workers are located in three sites, effective communication between employees is a challenge. “We used to send each other e-mail messages and leave voice mails, but it was often difficult to get quick responses to simple questions,” says Cliff Brown, IT Technician, Glasgow Cultural Enterprises. “Being able to connect with people across all three buildings is very important when it comes to managing ticket sales, organizing events, and booking equipment such as overhead projectors or plasma screens,” he adds.

GCE also needs to deliver excellent levels of service to corporate clients booking and organizing events at its venues. “We had a situation where clients would call and employees were away from their desks or working at other sites,” says Brown. “Without being able to track them down easily, we couldn’t pass on important messages from clients in a timely manner, making us less responsive to their needs.”

Because GCE employees rely heavily on e-mail systems to communicate, management requirements for the company’s Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 messaging environment were starting to increase due to employees sending large attachments, often unrelated to work. “We wanted to address this issue by reducing reliance on e-mail as the principal form of communication and providing alternative channels, such as instant messaging,” says Brown.

In addition, Brown had longer term plans to reduce voice call costs across the business using IP-based telephony solutions. “We saw the cost-saving potential of IP by connecting two switches in two separate buildings using an IP link,” he says. “We wanted to take our first steps toward replacing our traditional switched calls altogether and were prepared to invest in technologies that could take us down this road.”

Finally, GCE wanted to reduce the costs associated with offering videoconferencing services to corporate clients. While videoconferencing is a key requirement for some corporate clients, it previously required GCE to hire dedicated ISDN lines and camera equipment, reducing margins and increasing set up costs. “We wanted to lay the foundation for running videoconferencing services over our existing network,” says Brown. “Achieving this would allow us to increase revenues from corporate events significantly by reducing internal spend on expensive ISDN lines and camera equipment”

Solution

The company’s communications infrastructure is managed by trusted technology partner Digital IP. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, the company has access to the latest Microsoft products and technologies.

“We got involved with a pilot program for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and looked for customers who might benefit from real-time, multichannel communications,” says Robert Adie, IT Director at Digital IP. “With a need to improve communications across multiple sites, issues such as e-mail management, plans for implementing IP telephony, and a need to support videoconferencing for clients, GCE was an obvious candidate.”

In February 2007, Digital IP deployed Office Communications Server 2007 at the arts organization. At the same time, the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client was deployed to 100 computers on the company’s network and is now being used by 160 employees to contact colleagues in real time. Office Communicator 2007 provides a “Contacts list” of employees, allowing users to see colleague names, along with presence information. Presence indicates when colleagues are busy, in a meeting, away from their desk, or available to take a call or respond to an instant message. This information is based on factors such as real-time calendar details from Microsoft Office Outlook and user logon status.

Members of the 45-strong box office team can now contact available colleagues through e-mail or instant messages. This helps to answer customers’ enquiries on upcoming shows and events in near real time and streamline communications between box office staff, ensuring that phone lines are manned and that sufficient personnel are available to sell tickets at the front of house.

Likewise, members of the events team use Office Communicator 2007 to alert colleagues who are logged onto computers in other buildings when they miss calls from corporate clients. And because Digital IP configured the system to record all instant-message conversations and e-mail messages, employees have a reference point to make sure they have completed the tasks they were assigned. “It was fast and cost effective to configure message archiving and recording using features built-in to Office Communications Server 2007,” says Adie. “This significantly reduced the time required to deploy the solution.”

Brown personally uses Office Communicator 2007 to pick up and answer helpdesk requests from employees across GCE. “When I get a service request, I can call back immediately and resolve the issue on the phone,” he says. “If the problem is straightforward, I can sometimes resolve it with a single instant message.”

Office Communicator 2007 supports real-time communication, including instant messaging, using the existing GCE local area network (LAN). In the future, GCE plans to use Office Communicator 2007 as a foundation for IP telephony and videoconferencing, reducing the cost of traditional switched telephone calls internally and offering videoconferencing as a value-added service for corporate clients.

Benefits

Using Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007, GCE employees can see whether colleagues are available and contact them using traditional phone calls, e-mail messages, or instant messages. This is helping to increase responsiveness to customer needs in terms of ticket sales to the public, arranging concerts, and programming events for corporate customers. “We are able to work together more effectively using Office Communicator 2007,” says Brown. “This is mainly because we can now see if colleagues are at their desks or working at other GCE buildings. We can also send instant messages to colleagues, helping us serve customers better.” In addition, the solution reduces the volume of e-mail messages sent by GCE employees, reducing storage costs and IT management workloads. It also lays the foundation for cost-saving IP telephony services and gives GCE the option to deploy lucrative videoconferencing services for corporate clients quickly and cost effectively in the future.

Office Communicator 2007 helps us answer queries from members of the public at the first point of contact, significantly improving their experience of booking tickets with us.  Cliff Brown IT Technician Glasgow Cultural Enterprises

Improved Communication

Using Office Communications Server 2007, and Office Communicator 2007, GCE has greatly enhanced collaboration between workers at its three sites. “We no longer experience long delays waiting for responses to e-mail messages or leave voice mails for people who are away from their desks,” says Brown. “Instead, we can see which colleagues are available to take calls or respond to instant messages and get much faster answers to our questions.”

In addition, Office Communications Server 2007 is helping GCE improve the experience of corporate clients booking and organizing events. “We can now let colleagues know quickly if clients have called,” says Brown. “This helps us address queries faster and deliver consistently excellent service.”

Improved communications capabilities delivered by Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 also help GCE employees answer questions from the public. “When a box office employee can’t answer a question related to a show or concert, they can send an instant message to a colleague requesting information,” says Brown. “In this way, Office Communicator 2007 helps us answer queries from members of the public at the first point of contact, significantly improving their experience of booking tickets with us.”

Reduced E-Mail Storage Needs

In the past, GCE had issues with e-mail capacity. “Our employees hoard e-mails, many of which have large attachments,” says Brown. “We even had to replace our Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to increase inbox capacity and we will move to Centro, which includes Exchange Server 2007, in the first quarter of 2008.

“With the deployment of Office Communications Server 2007, we are encouraging people to use instant messages, significantly reducing reliance on the e-mail system,” he continues. “Because instant messages are text-based, they take up a fraction of the storage that we need for e-mails and are much easier to manage.”

As a result of this improvement, Brown will ultimately reduce his administrative workload. In addition, Office Communicator 2007 promises to deliver significant savings in terms of storage costs. “Although it’s difficult to quantify this benefit until all our people are using the technology, we expect both significant financial and time savings.”

Potential to Reduce Telephony Costs

GCE operates two telephony switches in two separate buildings. These are currently connected using an IP link. To increase efficiency, and reduce call costs, the company plans to deploy IP telephony across all sites based on Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 in the near future.

“We can see the long-term benefits of deploying IP telephony solutions based on Microsoft technology,” says Brown. “We are planning to buy some IP desk phones from Microsoft as soon as they become available and we will integrate them with our existing network to assess the benefits more fully.”

New Revenue Opportunities

Once GCE has connected Office Communications Server 2007 with its existing switched telephony system, it will be able to offer more efficient, less expensive videoconferencing services to its corporate customers. This will provide a new revenue opportunity that will deliver rapid returns on the company’s investments in Microsoft technology.

“In the past, some customers have held videoconferences here,” says Brown. “Although we have been able to offer the service, it required us to set up dedicated ISDN lines and hire additional equipment.

“Using Office Communications Server 2007, we will be able to plug in the Microsoft RoundTable 360 degree camera and run videoconferences over our network seamlessly,” he continues. “We will be able to do this without support from external service providers and at a low cost to the business.”

With advanced conference phone RoundTable, employees can follow participants in conferences, identify active speakers and see close-ups of their faces. And when conversation shifts, RoundTable shifts with it. The phone has advanced speech recognition so it can crosscut between multiple speakers without losing track of the conversation.

Support from a Trusted Technology Partner

Throughout the Office Communications Server 2007 deployment, GCE was supported by a team from Digital IP. “Five years ago, we had one server for all our IT services,” says Brown. “Now, we have 12 servers, more than 100 computers, and sell half a million tickets a year.

“Digital IP has helped us manage this rapid growth, and continues to add value with this latest Microsoft deployment. We expect our relationship to go from strength to strength as we embrace the benefits of IP telephony and videoconferencing.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Digital IP products and services, call 0845 2700 484 or visit the Web site at:
www.digital-ip.com

For more information about Glasgow Cultural Enterprises products and services, call 0141 353 8080 or visit the Web site at:
www.glasgowculturalenterprises.com

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2007