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Swift remote flip for Flooid
FourNet handles COVID-19 lockdown move for contact centre staff
Flooid handles the sales operations for some of the world’s most complex grocery, speciality, fashion and food and beverage retailers in their Point of Sale, self-checkout, mobile, eCommerce and social environments. During Covid-19, Flooid needed to quickly transition its Support & Service Desk operations so that staff could work remotely. FourNet and Avaya were key in enabling Flooid to quickly roll out a work from home plan that ensured employees were safe and that clients received the continuous support they count on.
Key Statistics
400
Employees
75
Contact centre agents
50%
Of customers in grocery sector
50%
Of customers in high street and hospitality
Background
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been mixed for Flooid. Half of its customers are in the sectors hardest hit by the lockdown restrictions – high street retail and hospitality, with the other half in the rapidly growing online grocery sector. It has 400 employees, based in Coventry, West Midlands, where 75 contact centre agents handle their software application service desk inquiries from retailers. As a result of government guidance to work from home where possible, and social distancing restrictions, Flooid urgently required its agents to work remotely.
Solution
As FourNet supports Flooid’s Avaya telephony and contact centre infrastructure, our teams got to work straight away to enable remote working. By the time lockdown restrictions were imposed by the government, remote working was already up and running. Thanks to the close working relationship between our teams, we were able to ramp up the service using soft phone technology on laptops provided to contact centre agents. By accessing 90-day free licences from Avaya, agents were able to log-into the contact centre with full functionality to carry out their day to day roles as normal.
The FourNet Solution
With security and resilience a key priority, FourNet’s solution was to employ a hybrid approach to cloud, through our innovative, fully managed, Agile Cloud service.
Moving to Teams for their Unified Communications solution, unlocked a host of advantages for NRS:
- Moving from Avaya to Teams ensures the longevity of the Contact Centre, since Enghouse’s long-term strategy is for tight Microsoft integration
- NRS knew that FourNet had a mature direct routing platform in Agile Cloud, so if the solution was moved to Agile Cloud, it could be consumed as a service and there would be no more reliance on their own infrastructure.
- FourNet also provides analytics, call recording and disaster recovery as standard, so NRS could leverage these services easily
- Agile Cloud has many customers using Teams and Enghouse, therefore NRS knew it was a tried and trusted reference architecture.
- We’re also on net with PCI Compliance solutions, so NRS also bought into a PCI descoping solution which is part of the Agile Cloud – and is ‘switched on’ for them
- NRS needed MPLS to assure the quality of service of their Avaya IP Office calls from HQ out to branch sites, by moving to Teams – which is based in Azure on public internet – the need for MPLS was removed.
- NRS already used Gamma for SIP which was delivered over the existing MPLS. Migrating the SIP into Agile Cloud was a simple process, as we are connected to Gamma from multiple data centres already
- NRS have easily enabled Enghouse omnichannel, as it’s simple to add in Agile Cloud. For example we already have the DMZs required for hosting webchat, whereas for customers on premise there is a lot of pre-requisite work to do.
With the need for MPLS gone, FourNet explored the benefits of SD-WAN with NRS. There were many advantages to this:
- Quick provision of new sites (5G, use existing internet circuits, pre staged Fortinet NGFW that FourNet would install quickly on site)
- Fortinet NGFW are a complete security solution in a box, therefore each site can break out locally to the internet for their web based SaaS with a full security stack.
- Home workers were fully catered for by a ZTNA client which connects back into the SD-WAN giving the same security stack for users that are out of the office
- Agile Cloud is built upon Fortinet products, so connecting Agile Cloud to the NRS SD-WAN was simple, and from Agile Cloud NRS can work with FourNet to manage their SD-WAN estate, including:
- Management – easy provision and management of the SD-WAN configuration
- Analytics – all traffic on the SD-WAN is analysed and passed to FortiLabs for threat inspection
- End User Client Management – the same security policies to all users
With NRS on the SD-WAN, NRS are now leveraging many more services from FourNet, because it’s extremely simple and cost effective to do so. These include:
- Replacing Cisco LAN and wireless with FourNet “SD-Branch” solution. This is Fortinet switches and access points managed by the same Agile Cloud platform, with network access control now across the entire estate
- Authentication services
- Mail and Web proxies
- Future SIEM and SOAR functionality
Benefits
FourNet's rapid action ensured the smooth running of our business and the protection of our staff at a time when everything was looking uncertain. The ability to access free licences enabled our agents to carry on looking after our customers while socially distancing at home, and has showed us the advantages of remote working. As a result, we are looking seriously at how this technology can help us in a post COVID-lockdown world.
Dan OMahoney
Head of Internal Business Systems, Flooid
We are delighted that we were able to assist Flooid in continuing its business, while better protecting its employees from coronavirus. We are also encouraged that our technology has allowed such a smooth transition to home working that Flood is considering its options for the future. Remote working will become the new normal, and FourNet will be here to help.
Mike Tongue
Account Director, FourNet