A growing business partnered with BT to extend its European footprint and build a more efficient call centre network.

A global leader in delivering payment solutions, Elavon had to extend its infrastructure to bring a newly acquired credit card business into its corporate network. Call centres in Frankfurt and Warsaw needed to become part of its European footprint.

The extension of the WAN (Wide Area Network) to Germany and Poland was also an opportunity to standardise and improve what was there already. The decision was taken to integrate all it European sites, which included another call centre in Arklow, Ireland, using the same voice network run out over an MPLS IP backbone.

With merchants in more than 30 countries that rely on Elavon to accurately process a wide range of transaction types, 24/7 call centres are a critical part of its business.

We had a very aggressive timescale of around six months to set up the new call centres. BT was an existing supplier and its presence in Europe was one of the reasons we went with them,”

Tony Kennedy, Head of Technology Services at Elavon.

Not only was BT able to install the Nortel PBX systems on time, keeping the hardware consistent with existing sites, it was also able to deal with different communication companies on the ground in Germany and Poland, building a secure and resilient network that connected all the call centres together.

 

Having project managed the deployment, BT is now the main supplier of WAN services and maintenance across Ireland, Germany, Poland, the UK, Spain, Norway and Netherlands. The MPLS network and Nortel equipment gives Elavon a consistent voice and data service and the ability to seamlessly share customer queries between sites. Layered on top is a virtual call centre solution that makes the business much more agile.

Queries can be routed to any of our multilingual customer service representatives depending on who is available and who has the correct skills to deal with the call. This has brought much more flexibility to the business, allowing us to respond to customer needs without having to fundamentally change the way resources are allocated.”

Tony Kennedy, Head of Technology Services at Elavon.

Network infrastructure is mission critical for Elavon. In addition to the voice and data layer for the call centres, there is a data network for file sharing across the company and a separate network for merchant transactions. In the BT Data Centre in Citwyest, Dublin, the Elavon co-location footprint had to be doubled to accommodate a growth in credit card transactions.

Kennedy is extremely happy with the scope of Elavon’s pan-European partnership with BT and the way it has matched its requirements.

On the one hand, we have been able to go into a country for the first time knowing that BT has on-the-ground expertise to deliver what we want, and on the other we have the comfort of the umbrella relationship with the senior account team in Ireland,” he said.