LAFARGE CASE STUDY
Lafarge is the world leader in construction materials, a position achieved through experience and innovation across two centuries. With 5,000 employees over 300 locations with a turn over of £1 billion pounds per annum, they offer a comprehensive range of products, services and solutions for each stage of the construction and building process.
Lafarge Aggregates have been customers of Central Telecom for the last 5 years, their relationship started after Central successfully tendered for the new telephony infrastructure at Lafarge Aggregates Head Office in Syston, Leicester that houses over 300 people.
Central Telecom maintain the Head Office for aggregates in Leicester, the Head Office for cement in Solihull, 22 offices for The Ready Mix Sector around the UK and an office for new plaster board works at Ferrybridge.
Lafarge’s key requirement was for a solution that would be capable of providing the immediate functionality they needed along with a capacity to grow with the business. The system also had to provide future technologies and applications such as additional modules or upgrades.
Helen Brawn, UK IT Telecommunications Manager for Lafarge, said;” I am looking for a standard approach to all telephony infrastructure across Lafarge UK, we have 300 sites in total and my department services the needs for approximately 5,000 people.
Our relationship with Central started when they won the tender for our new Head Office telephony infrastructure. This entailed a move from our old office in Groby to our new Syston office, which now houses over 300 people. The site incorporates a 150 agent Customer Service Centre and other departments including payroll, finance, and procurement and planning.
Central recommended Avaya CM3 for our Syston site that was the ideal solution for our Contact Centre. Lafarge’s Contact Centre was originally centralised at Syston for economies of scale, however after a period of time we discovered that centralisation of our contact centre services lead to a loss of our local relationships. We decided to go decentralise and move agents back to our 22 sector offices. The implementation of IPT allowed us to do this without incurring additional costs.
All the 22 sector offices share the same functionality and central services with head office, including CMS reporting, NICE voice recording, Proteus Call Logger, and Korus Voice Mail.
We have IPT at our Cement Site in Solihull and are in the process of connecting this office with our Syston office to provide a full Disaster Recovery Solution.”
Central’s Project and Account Management Teams have worked closely with Lafarge over the years to provide them with a strategy for the growth and gradual replacement of their systems as they reach end of life with new Avaya systems across the business.
Helen continues, “Central have always worked with us to ensure that every aspect of delivery is on time and on budget. No matter whom you speak to at Central they are always willing to help and I would always recommend them for their professional approach.
The ongoing support with the solution has been excellent, if we have any issues Central work with us, and our customer team, to resolve the problem.
The benefits of the Avaya solution include ease of use and more flexibility with call routing. The system modularity has enabled us to have a centralised solution that we can build and develop as and when we need.”
In the future, LaFarge will be tendering for a new MPLS/Wan and when this is in place, it will allow them to have a full IP solution throughout the UK. This will be rolled out over a period of time as and when systems need to be replaced.
