Melbourne’s Peak Insight moves 4,000-person paper manufacturer to Webex

Melbourne-based Cisco partner Peak Insight has moved  4,000-person paper manufacturer Opal Packaging Australia to Webex Calling and Contact Centre

The deployment is part of a five-year managed services deal that will see Peak Insight provide support and guidance about Opal's entire telephony and contact centre infrastructure.

Opal is one of Australia’s largest producers of paper and paper products, with more than 4000 staff across Australia and New Zealand.

Opal IT service manager Thy Rith said the company decided to replace its legacy telephony and contact centre platforms due to reliability issues and an inability to scale it.

“We had a number of ageing PABX units installed in various locations and separate platforms supporting our six contact centres,” Rith stated.

“While this had supported us for more than ten years, it had become clear that a new solution was required."

“We were also looking for a way to shift from our existing on-premise equipment to a cloud-based alternative. When we closely examined the Peak Insight solution comprising Webex Calling and Webex Contact Centre we could see it was the most appropriate fit for our requirements.”

Peak Insight founder and principal consultant Sam Deckert said Opal had undertaken a rigorous assessment process before selecting the Cisco Webex solution.

A phased approach

The contract with Peak Insight was signed in January 2022 and work began on the initial phase of the deployment.

This involved the replacement of telephony equipment in the company’s headquarters and within contact centres in Melbourne and Perth.

“This initial phase was completed within a four-month window,” said Deckert.

“This was important as licencing agreements on Opal’s legacy equipment was coming to an end.”

Since then, work has continued on the rollout on a site-by-site basis as existing equipment contracts expired.

It is anticipated that all company sites will have been migrated to Webex by late 2023.

“Overall, the migration to the new system has been very smooth,” said Rith.

“The task of porting numbers from multiple existing carriers was seamless and occurred without any disruption to company operations.”

Salesforce integration

Rith said one of the key factors that led to the selection of the Peak Insight solution was the ability to have tight integration with his company’s Salesforce CRM platform.

“This has enabled us to improve our level of service when customers call into our contact centres,” he said.

“This is important as voice calls is one of the primary channels used by our customers to place orders.”

The integration allows incoming calls to be automatically routed to the most appropriate agent where details about the customer and past transactions are displayed on their screen.

“Previously agents had to toggle between screens to see all the information they needed,” he said.

“This is no longer required which makes agents more efficient and significantly improves the experience for the customer.”

Improved reliability and flexibility

Rith said with the new voice platform in place, there had been a significant improvement in reliability and call quality.

“This was one of the key reasons that we shifted from our legacy platforms and I am pleased to say the improvement has been very noticeable,” he said.

“It has also boosted our level of flexibility which has been important during pandemic lockdowns where many staff had to work from home.”

Rith said remote-working staff no longer needed to rely on VPN links but could instead use a web-based client and connect to the platform over a home internet connection.

An ongoing relationship

“We were very keen to have a partner able to provide long-term support and Peak Insight has the knowledge and experience to make this happen,” Rith said.

“They have taken the time to fully understand our requirements as a company and ensure that the service they deliver matches exactly what we need.”

“It’s also great to have a single vendor for both our telephony and contact centre infrastructures,” he said.

“This reduces complexity and ensures we can achieve the best possible level of integration.”