7 February 2015
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
eir Business today announced it has won the contract to design, build, deliver, manage and support Dairygold’s IPT infrastructure for its network of retail Co-Op Retail Stores throughout Munster. The contract delivers an improved communications platform which secures business and financial efficiencies for Dairygold as well as improving the customer experience for Dairygold’s own stakeholders. Since appointing this contract to eir, IP telephony has been successfully rolled out to 38 branches, with Dairygold witnessing a 39% reduction in voice call costs.
eir has also upgraded the on-premise network equipment and doubled the bandwidth across the 38 branches. It has implemented a converged solution which leverages eir’s network to support voice and data communications to all 38 sites and enabled the replacement of the legacy and costly PABX estate. This new converged solution provides Dairygold with an upgraded network on which they can roll out a suite of future Unified Communications services, enabling further efficiencies and improving on the customer experience with Dairygold.
From a Dairygold perspective, the contract has a number of benefits as outlined by Dairygold Head of IT, Brian Padden, “eir has been our IT communications partner since 2013 and during that time they implemented a number of successful and cost saving technical solutions, including replacing our legacy PBX systems in our administration offices, milling facilities and now our retail outlets. These changes enabled us improve our communication capabilities via the convenience of extension dialing across facilities, “follow me” functionality, instant messaging, soft phone and presence. From a financial perspective we immediately benefited from direct OPEX savings of €65K per annum as well as cost avoidance of approximately €150k.
In addition, eir was able to upgrade all our on-premise networking equipment at our retail outlets which has essentially future proofed that infrastructure for the next five years. eir doubled the line capacity in many of our locations to meet the increased bandwidth requirements of our growing business, in the post milk quota era. As many of our locations are in rural locations to best serve our customers, we found eir to be the provider who could serve us on their own dedicated network, something which is a key differentiator for us and another reason we had the confidence in them to deliver as effectively as they have.”
Bill Archer, Managing Director of eir Business, commented, “The management of this multi-faceted contract is focusing on quality of service, innovation and providing financial savings and technical excellence for Dairygold. As an existing client of ours, we were keenly aware of where we could add value, and most importantly, where we could use Dairygold’s existing network capability to greater effect, while at the same time bringing new technologies into the equation. It’s these complex business scenarios that fit well into our scope of expertise. We are delighted that Dairygold chose eir Business and we look forward to working with them over the coming years.”
For Dairygold, there are other areas of the contract agreement that are beneficial including leveraging the expanded reach of eir’s network footprint, plus a range of yet to be announced technical firsts and technology investments, due to be rolled out throughout 2016.
