Harcourts Blue Realty has carved out a solid bit of territory in Brisbane's eastern suburbs in recent years, to the point where its communications system began to give it growing pains.
Its 30-user Panasonic telephone system was inflicting high costs and limited capacity. Monthly call charges were increasing, and rates were dictated by the carrier, AAPT, taking cost control out of the estate agent's hands.
There were also growing add-on charges and the ''hidden'' costs of mobile phone call-ins. Landlines were not being used for call routing, and there were high call-back charges, and missed calls.
And then there were high costs of maintenance and service each time a person needed to be added or removed from the system.
Harcourts Blue Realty customer service manager, Gerry Gorry, was increasingly frustrated with the costs and inability of the Panasonic system to create any sort of scale going forward.
"The big issue was that we had no insight into what was happening with our calls," he says.
"We realised we were wasting money with staff calling each other within the branches using the traditional telephone, but we had no way of knowing how, where and what to rein in. This was having a severe impact on our ability to plan for growth."
The lack of a telephony system across the company's three branches had promoted something of a silo mentality, which meant staff did not feel connected and part of a team.
Following discussions with telephony advisers ITT Communications, and after testing various technologies, the real estate management decided a reliable and scalable unified communications (UC) solution would be the best option to replace the system that was coming to the end of a five-year lease.
"We needed to reduce our call costs and provide our sales and support staff with a resource to help them be more productive," says Gorry.
"We had to find a way to help our staff communicate more effectively.
"Ease-of-use was another issue. Staff found the current features awkward, not at all intuitive and not linked in any way to our computer resources.
"As a result, the system was only being used for basic telephony. Training people on the Panasonic system for simple tasks, such as transferring calls, voicemail, and remotely accessing calls, was extremely time-consuming."
With the contract termination date pending, Gorry had an opportunity to take on a new supplier that provided immediate savings in call costs, reduce basic maintenance expenses, and includes additional resources that could lift productivity.
As Harcourts Blue Realty operations grew, the system needed to be easy to manage and use, efficient to deploy, and highly scalable, providing free calls between branch offices.
After evaluating the available options and examining various demonstrations, the real estate agents selected a ShoreTel UC system comprising ShoreGear 40 and ShoreGear 90 BRI switches and 61 ShorePhone IP 560 and IP 212 telephones.
It also included ShoreWare Personal Call Manager and extension and mailbox applications.
Two ShoreTel branch office solutions (comprising DVS licences, site licences and server) were included in the deployment to maximise the efficiency of the call centre and reception desk.
"Our sales people found the ShoreWare Call Manager feature a genuine resource that helped them achieve more from their work day," says Gorry.
ShoreWare Call Manager provides information about incoming calls and call history, so users can access a variety of details about the caller before taking the call.
Users could also type in a call recipient's name and make the call using a desktop computer without picking up the handset.
ShoreTel simplified the system management by allowing them to access the UC system using a browser-based administration interface, ShoreWare Director, from anywhere on the network.
ShoreWare Director is a web-based network management tool that provides a single management interface for all Harcourts Blue Realty's communications applications.
It recognises active IP telephones on the network, and eliminates manual processes by configuring applications so new users are automatically assigned an extension, mailbox,
and auto-attendant profile when they first access their voicemail, and can then be added to an Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) group.
Any changes needed to the system such as adding people, changing numbers or moving handsets around the offices, can be done in-house.
"There are no costs involved when we do this, apart from the costs of any additional handsets that we need," says Gorry.
The system can scale up to 10,000 users.
Gorry has seen immediate benefits because of the system's ease of use.
"The features of ShoreTel Director are very intuitive and much easier to learn and use compared to the old system," he says.
"The easy-to-use features are particularly important for real estate people who are not traditionally tech savvy. Because of this ease-of-use, we noticed an immediate lift in administrator productivity.
"When you add the benefits of the productivity boost to the bottom line impact of the free inter-branch call costs, you quickly realise that you have a significant resource, and one that will promote your growth into the future.
"The deployment started to provide an investment return from day one," says Gorry.
Property consultants have full telephony resources in the office or on the road.
The remote mobile capabilities of the UC system have increased productivity of Harcourts' real estate consultants, who spend a large part of their day away from the office.
Physical location is no longer an issue.
"We have been able to implement a 1300 number that can easily be assigned to different answering points to reflect our business strategy," said Gorry.
"Call handling can now be managed by users with easy access to information to transfer and control each call. The ability to switch all calls to any nominated location provides us with better use of our administration resources.
"Staff can work from different locations and assign their phone to colleagues or sites in any of our offices.
"Looking ahead, the ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager enables users to access their UC features via major mobile handsets including Blackberry and Motorola. We see mobility being an exciting second phase in our plan for generating additional productivity from our communications," he adds.
Harcourts Blue Realty has now set up a telephone 'Hotline' service in each office to connect clients and potential tenants to its property management division.
Walk-in rental inquiries can be dealt with at any branch through the ''Hotline'' service.
By offering a single point of contact for clients, the estate agent has seen a reduction in response times for landlords and people in the rental market, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
"The UC system means that being on the road is now the same as being in the office," says Gorry.
The ShoreTel UC system provides visibility across all of Harcourts Blue Realty branches and operations.
Colleagues are able to see who is on the phone, who is in the office, and when the sales consultant can take the call. This way they don't waste time calling someone when they are not available.
By providing integrated contact management with Outlook, the ShoreTel UC system enables the estate agent to create and modify user groups for specific marketing campaigns.
This provides a resource for sales professionals who want to engage with potential customers and others who might refer business to the agency.
"The ShoreTel UC system has created an estimated 30 percent savings in call and system management costs, and all calls within our branches now are completely free," says Gorry.
"Cost savings like these make a real difference to the business bottomline."
Sales and administrative staff are able to nominate how, where and when they take calls. As an additional productivity resource, they can also use different ringtones to identify the type of incoming call and route messages to different locations as and when required.
The functionality of the UC system enables staff to automatically dial-out from their PC, instead of having to dial numbers manually.
This feature saves sales and administration staff dozens of man-hours annually, as they don't have to stop work to look up telephone numbers from their files and then dial the number.
"The ShoreTel UC system is a best of breed UC system," says Hamish Haggitt, managing director of ITT Communications.
"Harcourts Blue Realty management has a significantly improved telephony system that provides measurable call cost savings, and a productivity boost for staff.
"It has a significant resource that will underpin its growth into the future," he says.
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