26 January 2010
Kcom Chosen to Assist Hermes in Office Relocation
Kcom provides expertise and support to enable seamless move and system upgrade in less than five months
London, UK – 26th January, 2010: Hermes, a business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer home delivery service, has chosen Kcom, part of the KCOM Group, to assist in its office relocation and technology upgrade. Hermes, whose customers include high street retailers, provides clients with a dedicated customer home delivery service.
Previously known as Parcelnet and part of a larger home shopping business, Hermes demerged and became a standalone business in 2008. In order to foster independence and improve the company’s technology infrastructure, Hermes decided to move 270 staff to a new location and create a state-of-the-art facility.
Kcom was selected to design, install and provide support to train staff on the new functionality and to ensure a seamless transition to the new offices, all against tight timescales. The plans for the re-location allowed less than five months from Hermes signing the contract to moving into the new office. All work was completed on time and the transition to the new premises was seamless.
It was essential that the Hermes call centre was fully operational on the first day of the move and that callers did not experience any delays in service. The previous call centre system was 15 years old and the new one included a number of functionalities which many of the staff would be unfamiliar with. During a two week handover period trainers were on site at Hermes, and Kcom provided training which was spread throughout the organisation.
Kcom was selected to provide the LAN infrastructure, back office IP telephony and the Internet Protocol Contact Centre (IPCC) call centre management for the new head office in Morley. Hermes now benefits from a new and future-proofed telephony system which includes many additional capabilities, such as presence, which were not possible on the older system. Presence maintains real-time information about a person's availability, enabling employees to see how best to contact their co-workers at that moment, saving the time and inconvenience of using multiple communication channels to locate people.
Simon Townley, Head of Infrastructure, Hermes, said, “Kcom was chosen to provide the LAN infrastructure and telephony needs because of its reputation for quick delivery, experience and commitment to the task. We knew that completing a full relocation in just four months would be a tough job which many would be unable to complete. Kcom was best placed to help us deliver this and was the right corporate fit for Hermes - we knew the team would go the extra mile.”
Dawn Redman, Head of Customer Services, Hermes Europe said, “From day one at the new office the call centre was up and running using the basic call centre features. Productivity has doubled. We were at 5-6 enquiries per FTE-hour and we are now at 9.5 to 10.5. I know this because we get better management information via the new systems; total visibility, by operative, by day, by brand. This means we can better allocate staff skills, putting our more effective resource to the more complex accounts; we can now target individual people to brands and volumes. Before, we simply couldn’t”.
Hermes intends to gradually build on the features that the call centre and wider business is using and will incorporate new functionality at 90 day intervals. Presence will be introduced to the wider organisation over a five year period - enabling more efficient intra-organisational communications and resulting in more effective working practices.
Paul Renucci, Managing Director at Kcom commented, “Hermes does not have a large internal IT technical support team so it was important that the partner selected could provide the right skills and thought leadership to advise on how best to meet the requirements of the business. We were able to use our experience and expertise to assist Hermes’ process in selecting the relevant technologies. Hermes now benefits from a future-proofed telephony infrastructure and ongoing support from Kcom as it introduces more of the technology’s capabilities to the workplace.”
Tom Buttle
Catalysis
0207 759 2014
Kcom.team@catalysis.co.uk
About Kcom
Kcom, part of the KCOM Group PLC, provides communication services for multi-site enterprise and public sector organisations across the UK, and has a well established reseller channel. As an independent provider of these services, supported by its BT Wholesale partnership, Kcom is able to offer advanced network capability and related added value services, coupled with a flexible approach to delivering a different class of service to its customers.
Its customers include GVA Grimley, British Airways, North Wales Police, Specsavers, City of London, Phones4u, Rosslyn Analytics, Hermes, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, Windsor Telecom and Diva Telecoms.
About Hermes
Hermes is the UK's largest courier delivery network, handling more than 100 million collections and deliveries each year. Hermes works with companies of all sizes including many of the leading high-street, catalogue and online retailers within the UK such as Next Directory, QVC, Lands' End, Lakeland Limited and Boden.
Hermes operates a network of over 7,500 lifestyle couriers that provides flexible, high-quality doorstep delivery, combined with a friendly and local approach.
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