A flexible 250+ user communications system

With the responsibility of responding to over 4,000 service calls per days, from over 25,000 sites including major blue chip organisations, Romec prides itself on delivering a highly efficient service that sets it apart from other FM providers.

With 200 operators servicing calls across three sites in Warrington, Leeds and head office in Stockport, Romec's telephone system is paramount to the success of its operation. When the old circuit switched system began to struggle under the strain, the information services (IS) management team knew it was time invest in a new solution that would provide greater flexibility and functionality.

Stuart Keating, IS Services Manager at Romec comments, "At Romec we manage all the service elements of a facility including; intruder alarms, power, gas, water, air conditioning, in fact anything that involves the smooth running of an operation. Typically when an alarm or call comes in, the operator needs to know what takes priority so they can take the necessary steps to handle it. calling a facility manager, a sub-contractor or in the case of an intruder alarm the relevant key-holder. It is important that the call is answered promptly by operators who have the necessary skill set, or if they are not available, the call needs to be automatically routed to next person in the group. Furthermore it is essential that if for any reason we have a power or any other infrastructure failure at any of our sites the system can route calls to a back-up facility. Business continuity is critical to both ours and our clients' operations.

Our incumbent system had been installed for some time and was struggling to cope with the demands we were putting on it. To improve the efficiency of our operation we also needed new functionality such as on-line presence, so we could immediately see from any location who is logged on and who is not. We also wanted support for remote working, so operators could be based from any location, complete call integrity between all three sites for disaster recovery purposes and simple to use call recording for training and dispute resolution."

Romec evaluated a number of systems on the market before finally selecting the software-based unified communications SwyxWare from Swyx gold partner, GPNS. Keating explains the selection process: "We were very impressed by the SwyxWare solution and the knowledge GPNS demonstrated about our business requirements. The software was feature rich, future proof and extremely flexible and could be deployed on our existing infrastructure and supported by our own in-house staff, therefore negating the need to rely on third-party contractors. We really like the licensing model as this would allow us to grow our call centres incrementally without major capital costs or disruptions to our operation."