Avoira

DIRECT ACCESS TO UNMATCHED TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

UNLOCKING TOMORROW’S SOLUTIONS TODAY

Avoira remains dedicated to improving businesses by providing technology, infrastructure, systems, and strategies through its array of innovative equipment, managed services, and bespoke consulting.

We hear more about the company’s expertise and experience spanning four decades with Scott Mordue, Head of Marketing

Writer: Ed Budds | Project Manager: Liam Pye

From self-driving vehicles to generative artificial intelligence (AI), the potential for technology is huge, providing it is used and harnessed in the right way.

“There are some amazing trends playing out right now in the vast technology industry and it has been incredible to see how hybrid working has accelerated, driven by the necessity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to operate remotely, as companies must reassess how costly office space is used,” opens Scott Mordue, Head of Marketing at Avoira.

“Employees now want more collaborative workspaces in the office with the option to bring in remote participants via video conferencing.

of Marketing

“This means redesigning office spaces to support collaboration rather than working alone at a desk,” he affirms.

Elsewhere, the process of unifying communications is a big shift currently happening industry-wide, whereby organisations are transitioning from traditional telephone systems to internet protocol (IP)-based solutions, which allows companies to pull together voice, data, and video into one seamless platform.

Avoira helps to solve the business challenges of its customers through leveraging technology services, products, and solutions, as well as offering a range of services from consultancy to project management and installation.

Scott Mordue, Head

“We provide ongoing support and maintenance to ensure the highest possible customer satisfaction. With a set of solution pillars, we can now offer leading expertise in key business areas such as radio, IT, communications, devices, audiovisual, and more,” outlines Mordue.

“With these solution pillars, Avoira helps customers to overcome their business challenges,” he adds.

UNMATCHED SERVICE

Avoira is the fusion of five business entities – Pennine, Videonations, Co-Channel, Rocom, and Yellowbus – all long-established, renowned, and trusted specialist providers from the communications industry, merging together to supply fluent technology solutions to UK businesses.

This unique fusion has transformed Avoira into a powerhouse in the communications sector.

Today, the company serves a plethora of customers across many public and private industry

verticals, from the government, NHS, schools, and universities through to multinational banks, airports, and retail chains.

“Our case studies and customer references are really strong and demonstrate our ability to work with both large and small companies,” sets out Mordue.

Geographically, Avoira predominantly covers the UK but has also recently started supplying European customers through its Avoira Devices division.

EME OUTLOOK: HOW WERE YOU FIRST INTRODUCED TO THE DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY?

Scott Mordue, Head of Marketing: “I have always been excited by technology and what it can offer. From playing arcade games as a child and getting my first home computer console through to training software developers on how to build AI models, technology takes us to places that are thrilling and enables things we only thought were possible in films.

“I started my career in technology as a software developer at Ericsson, before spending 20 years at Intel, where making the impossible possible was always the company spirit.

“Enabling software developers to use developer kits to build Internet of Things (IoT) applications or identify objects through AI are examples of areas that took me closer to seeing the future happen in front of our eyes.

“Now, at Avoira, I am privileged to work with myriad world-class suppliers to solve our customers’ challenges, and see technology being deployed is super exciting. I am challenged every day to help our customers see the benefits of using technology to solve real world problems.”

With a team of around 180 people that boasts an incredible depth of industry experience, the company prides itself on the strength of its employees.

“The business now differentiates itself by being ‘One Avoira’. The breadth and depth of the solutions and services that we offer allow our customers to work with us across a number of different projects; we are therefore able to consult with our customers and become a truly trusted partner,” he clarifies.

As such, Avoira depends on its expert engineers who are deployed on-site with security clearance to install complex systems and platforms.

“There aren’t many companies with this set of skills and customer references. Moreover, we have an online shop that supplies over 100,000 products, including laptops, headsets, and cables from leading brands. Our ability to supply so many products with fast delivery is vital to our top customers.”

FIRM ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENTS

Across every facet of the company, Avoira cares deeply about communities and the environment.

The Joys of CX

The concept of customer contact centres as large, centralised offices, exclusive to big companies, is a thing of the past. Today, delivering a strong customer experience (CX) is something most companies have a responsibility towards – and they are able to deliver CX remotely thanks to companies like 8x8, who are transforming the customer experience.

In many businesses, an unhappy customer is one who will go elsewhere. It’s why organisations place so much emphasis on the likes of Net Promoter Score (NPS) results and monitor for brand engagement; they want customers to be happy and to remain loyal. That’s one of the reasons there’s been such a transformation in the customer contact experience over the last few years.

Even into the 2020s, many companies dealt with customers purely over the phone, but that’s now changed. Companies are seeing the benefits of engaging via apps, text messaging, video calls, and social media channels, in addition to over the phone. What this means for customers is that they can have a more customised level of engagement - but it also gives companies a chance to utilise technology to better aid customers and end users.

Companies can now use intelligent customer assistants, powered by machine learning, to ensure customers get quick answers to routine queries, freeing up human staff to deal with the more complex queries that may need a refined personal approach.

A recent survey found that 56 percent of contact centre and CX leaders believe that customer experience will be the leading differentiator for brands by 2030, above the likes of product quality, price, and corporate responsibility. As such, it’s ‘all hands on deck’ to create a superior customer experience going forward, no matter where the interaction takes place. In this way, it will be a cross-departmental issue.

This will be a big change for many. Traditionally, the responsibility for customer experience has rested primarily on the contact centre’s shoulders. But more and more, organisations are realising that delivering consistent, exceptional CX requires a holistic approach that extends beyond the confines of any single department.

According to recent research, 64 percent of business leaders say that between 20 and 60 percent of their organisation’s customer interactions take place outside of the contact centre. The departments customers interact with most outside of the contact centre according to the survey are:

• Customer success

• Accounting/billing

• Sales

• Marketing

• Field service

For this reason, 98 percent of business leaders agree that CX should be an organisation-wide initiative, with large and medium-sized enterprises (those with 1,000 or more employees and 50 or more contact centre

agents) more fervent in their response. More than a quarter of large and medium-sized organisations strongly agree that CX responsibility should be shared across the organisation, while just 18 percent of small organisations say they strongly agree.

The hidden benefit to superior CX

If businesses have the tools in place to deliver positive customer experience, there’s another benefit: a positive employee experience, which cuts down on staff turnover and associated costs.

A personal touchpowered by technology

However, none of this happens in a vacuum. It takes modern, cloud-based tools to be able to deliver the optimum experience. In years gone by, only largescale contact centres had access to a full range of analytics and tools for differing customer-facing roles. Now, thanks to cloud computing and companies like 8x8, a leading integrated cloud communications platform provider, any organisation can access these – all on an easy-to-configure, single pane of glass for better CX and employee experience.

According to Russell Tilsed, EMEA Vice President at 8x8: “we’re trusted by more than 3 million business users, with a large customer base in social housing, retail, professional services, sports, transport, and healthcare. Working with many of the UK’s best channel partners, we believe we are delivering strong end-user and customer satisfaction with our offering.

“Our efforts have seen us recognised in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) for nine years in a row and as a Leader

in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, worldwide, for 12 consecutive years.”

And just as customers have their own individual ways of wanting to engage with companies, 8x8 recognises that instead of imposing all of its own solutions onto a company, it works with partners to ensure the best mix of solutions and advice. This includes working with the likes of Avoira to ensure the right offering is in place.

In the UK, these digital partnerships could not be more timely, due to the deactivation of the phone networks that have been the backbone of the country for over a decade. The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is soon to be a thing of the past.

However, nine out of ten UK businesses still rely on the PSTN network to operate. Each of these organisations must switch from analogue systems and telephone lines to cloud-based and digital alternatives over the next few years.

As the PSTN switch-off deadline approaches, there will be more pressure on service providers, field engineers, comms vendors, and everyone within the telecoms supply network to facilitate that change. If an organisation doesn’t seek advice from the likes of Avoira and 8x8 to enable switching over before then, the customer experience will be far from optimal, which is why pre-emptive planning is vital.

It does mean a period of significant change within the UK, but a change with huge customer benefits. As such, customers will reap the benefits for decades to come.

AVOIRA CORPORATE OBJECTIVES FOR 2024

1. Increase financial strength

2. Build a strong brand

3. Successfully implement the One Avoira strategy

4. Develop systems and cleanse company data

5. Deliver a world-class customer experience

6. Understand and champion sustainability, as well as the company’s impact on the environment

7. Make Avoira a great place to work

“Our corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, and carbon reduction policies detail our approach towards becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and our ISO 14001 accreditation demonstrates our commitment to identifying, managing, monitoring, and controlling environmental processes,” details Mordue.

“We are not just focused on making big visionary statements; we prefer to get the job done,” he acclaims.

By going digital and supporting hybrid working, Avoira conducts its business electronically where possible, and if the company does need to print something out, it chooses to avoid using paper.

Additionally, the flexibility of hybrid working can reduce energy consumption and allow the business to reduce its overall emissions output.

“THE BREADTH AND DEPTH OF THE SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES THAT WE OFFER ALLOW OUR CUSTOMERS TO WORK WITH US ACROSS A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT PROJECTS; WE ARE THEREFORE ABLE TO CONSULT WITH OUR CUSTOMERS AND BECOME A TRULY TRUSTED PARTNER”

– SCOTT MORDUE, HEAD OF MARKETING, AVOIRA

Similarly important are the smaller day-to-day savings such as switching lights and computers off when leaving a room, which reduces the amount of power used. Turning them off and using low power modes can save vital energy and money.

“We also run refurbishment and buy-back programmes to give our

customers the chance to reuse or recycle their old equipment, and encourage them to take advantage of our used battery recovery service or consider energy-saving products.”

Furthermore, whilst Avoira must travel to install its solutions, the company does so in a way that is conscious of the environment by

using an energy-efficient fleet and upgrading to electric vehicles (EVs) when they are up for renewal.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION SPECIALISTS

At present, the company has numerous customer projects in its burgeoning portfolio, which is always being added to and showcases a variety of different capabilities.

One interesting project is Aviora’s work with Principal Insurance, earning the company recognition and a prize at the Comms National Awards.

“We have so many exciting customer projects, from working with hospitals and schools to transform their telephone solutions, through to equipping hundreds of meeting rooms with video conferencing

equipment,” Mordue enthuses.

“We even transformed the IT systems of the East Lancashire Railway to bring them up to date and equip them to take the charity forward to the next level,” he details.

A further key focus for Avoira is on ransomware, as there are many organisations currently having their data stolen and being held to ransom to recover it. These are not small companies, but rather very large enterprises such as the Post Office.

becoming a real issue for companies and their customers. There are solutions to this issue, and everyone should be sitting up and taking note. We have a solution to stop ransomware attacks that has been implemented at Avoira, and we are more than happy to demonstrate this with anyone who realises the threat.”

continues to work on its range of customer events such as the Avoira Connect innovation day, where the business invites key customers into its offices and walks them through a technology showcase.

“Looking ahead, it would be great to see more customers take advantage of this opportunity. Our consultants can provide bespoke advice to companies on how our solutions can work for them,” Mordue concludes.

Tel: 0333 001 5151 info@avoira.com avoira.com