Avaya and International Avaya User Group Announce Winners of the Customer Innovation Awards

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - May 22, 2012) - IAUG Global Conference 2012

• Awards highlight commitment to bringing The Power of We™ to customers to help drive faster collaboration, smarter decisions and better business results.
• Six visionary companies cited for creative use of unified communications, contact center and/or data solutions and commitment to excellence.

Avaya and the International Avaya User Group (IAUG) have announced the winners of the 2012 Avaya Customer Innovation Awards highlighting companies that have transformed their business through innovative use of business communications and collaboration technologies.

Award winners were announced today at the IAUG Global Conference 2012 in Boston and include:

• Technology Innovation Best Practice: Parkview Health (US) - Avaya mobility solutions save Parkview Health staff valuable time by streamlining communications, operations and travel time between nurse stations, patients, labs and other facilities. Avaya Unified Communications solutions enable Parkview staff to consolidate various alerts, messages and requests into single, prioritized lists, which allows them to deal more quickly with priority issues and operate much more efficiently. These innovations are helping Parkview reduce operating costs and improve the patient experience.
  
  
• Business Innovation Best Practice: Agoda Services Co., Ltd. (Thailand) - Avaya Contact Center solutions combined with the Avaya Desktop Video Device and other unified communications technologies are enabling Agoda to more cost-effectively and efficiently connect all of their global branch offices while scaling to accommodate triple-digit business growth. Agoda now handles tens of thousands of voice and email customer contacts per day, over three times the volume from just three years ago. Avaya's contact center solutions now support seven languages and will eventually accommodate 30 plus twice the number of agents by the end of 2012 -- all resulting in improved customer service and increased ROI.
  
  
• Enterprise Transformation (more than 1,000 employees): Deutsche Bank (Global) - Deutsche Bank is consolidating its global telecommunications infrastructure using Avaya's IP telephony platform to generate significant cost savings associated with frequent calls between widely dispersed locations. For Deutsche Bank this is a way to extend consistent voice communications services to all the Bank's employees in their workspaces - on the main campus, at branch offices, at remote sites (including home offices) as well as integrating with mobile communications. The global program will support 140,000 users across 3,100 buildings in 72 countries. Consolidating the functions of hundreds of PBXs (private branch exchanges) into five primary regional servers will drive significant cost savings. Upgrading the telephony infrastructure from legacy systems to Avaya IP and SIP-based telephony enables Deutsche Bank to deploy a single telephony solution globally to achieve synergies for scale and standardization and consolidate the managed services helpdesk under a single provider. The upgrades also enable real-time collaboration applications and features such as Avaya's IP soft phone application for mobility, click-to-dial and one number service for multiple devices -- including desktop phones, soft phone and smart phones.
  
  
• Enterprise Transformation (fewer than 1,000 employees): Minnesota Wild (US) - The Wild has a unique variety of communications needs in supporting their hockey team, arena, fans, ticketholders and staff. Using Avaya Social Media Manager and Contact Center solutions, The Wild has increased service to their fan base and boosted productivity for their sales department by using unified communications capabilities such as click to chat and email to better communicate with both Gen X and Y customers. Avaya mobility solutions help staff stay connected on the move - more efficiently and cost effectively -- from personnel moving around the arena to talent scouts video conferencing from scouting locations.
  
  
• Sustained Excellence: Comcast, Inc: (US) Following a company restructuring, Comcast needed to update and re-align its customer service operations to provide a more consistent customer experience, increase efficiency and reduce costs, while carefully managing training requirements a major technology revamp could require. Using an incremental approach, the first step consolidated trunks in two data centers and standardized on Avaya Experience Portal. This first phase alone allowed Comcast to reduce network costs by 40 percent and provided that consistent front end to all customer calls while leaving the agent experience unchanged. Benefits continue to accrue while Comcast plans an orderly transition of the total contact center platform to Avaya Aura Contact Center Elite in the second phase, thus uniting previously separate geographies onto a common Avaya platform.
  
  
• Small Business Excellence: FitFlop - FitFlop (shoes) and its sister brand Soap & Glory (cosmetics) share an Avaya IP Office system that enables them to keep their own identity while improving customer service. A centralized receptionist can deal with overflow calls and is aware of staff availability (presence) whatever their location. Customer Call Reporter has allowed them to track and improve the quality of customer call responses. The system also improves internal communication through mobility enabling key users to hot-desk and be reachable on their unique number with only a single voicemail to manage. The system dramatically reduced costs for roaming mobile calls between US, UK and other locations. It also offers scalability that allows FitFlop to more cost effectively 'pay for what they use' to meet their technology need, and centralized management of all sites provides even more control and cost efficiencies.

Supporting Quotes:
"The Customer Innovation Award nominees and winners are prime examples of the cost savings and productivity gains that enterprises can experience by using Avaya business collaboration solutions. Companies represented by our IAUG members are extremely well-positioned to lead their industries given the competitive advantages these collaboration technologies provide."
Rod Sagarsee, President, IAUG

"Congratulations to this year's winners and on their success in transforming their business to harness The Power of We to drive faster collaboration, smarter decisions and better business results."
Joel Hackney, Senior Vice President and President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing
Avaya

Tags: Avaya, IAUG, unified communications, business communications, collaboration, contact center, customer service, networking

About IAUG
The International Avaya User Group (IAUG) is an international, user-driven association serving Avaya customers worldwide. We exist to educate and inform telecommunications and IT professionals while providing a professional network for those with common concerns to address and success stories to share. IAUG is one of the industry's largest and most progressive user groups, with a community of nearly 6,000 members in more than 75 chapters around the globe. For more information on IAUG, visit www.iaug.org.

About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

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