BACKGROUND
FMG Support is the UK’s largest independent fleet performance improvement specialist. A customer-focussed approach has led to significant success over recent years and has seen turnover grow to £70m. Staff numbers increased from 300 to over 450 in the last two years and a consistent growth trajectory delivered further contract successes including a major national contract with the Highways Agency. FMG Support operates a fully resilient 24/7/365 service centre operation.
Such consistent growth brings challenges; most notably in the areas of space, resources and recruitment. Whilst already benefitting from much higher than average employee retention, and with a keen focus on employee satisfaction, FMG Support was keen to use technology to offer increased flexibility for its expanding workface in the form of home-working. Beyond the traditional home-workers in sales and senior management, FMG Support was keen to offer more flexible working arrangements to the majority of service centre personnel, thereby attracting potential new employees and increasing staff retention still further. Flexible working, part-time options, ‘parent-shifts’ and extending the existing geographic boundaries for employment were the primary objectives in establishing the home-working project.
APPROACH
With an advanced technology platform already in place, based on Cisco’s Campus model for advanced routing and switching and incorporating Computer-Talk’s ‘ICE’ IP Telephony Contact Centre with sophisticated KPI metrics for performance and service, FMG wanted to extend systems out to homeworkers in a controlled and manageable method with the ultimate aim of providing a ‘comparable experience to working within the office’. The solution specification needed to be suitable for a variety of end-point devices including terminal, PC or laptop, IP telephone handset and softphone and peripherals.
SOLUTION
FMG Support consulted with SICL, as a trusted technology partner, along with SICL’s vendor channel and other suppliers in the work required designing the solution. A key factor in the design was QoS on the home-worker telecommunication links and therefore a MPLS network from Star was selected as offering a suitable network platform with QoS enabled for key data and voice traffic managed and configured by SICL on Cisco end-point routers. The design also included increased resilience for the core network and permitted DNS failover for web services using Star’s ‘Critical Switch’ service. Traffic profiles were designed by SICL thereby allowing an easy and controlled model for end-point support and integration with the ICE Contact Centre and Microsoft Office Communications Server applications were vital.
RESULTS
The home-worker solution design meets all the criteria required of the project and enables much more flexible employment options for FMG Support whilst retaining system control and support capability.The solution also contributes greatly to the environment with fewer staff having to travel to work and establishes a solid platform for future technology development on a collaborative basis.
“SICL have proven over recent years to be a valuable technology partner; assisting with design and engineering to blend technologies into business solutions delivering real benefit.”
John Parker
ICT Manager
FMG Support