Carousel Industries Deploys Avaya Contact Center Solution for Industrial Distribution Leader

EXETER, R.I., Dec. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Carousel Industries, a leader in data networking and converged communications, today announced it has successfully deployed a national contact center project with Kaman Industrial Technologies Corp. a leading distributor of industrial parts that operates more than 200 customer service centers in the continental U.S, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and. Canada.

Kaman's offices and distribution centers are scattered throughout North America, providing best-in-class products and services to their customers. But prior to the project, the geographically disperse offices were detached from a cohesive voice communications infrastructure. If a branch received a call from a customer and the best person to take the call was in another location, a separate call to that expert would be needed followed by a call back to the customer. Additionally, during peak incoming call hours, customers could potentially be put on hold or unable to place an order quickly.

One Step Ahead with Avaya Communication Manager
Using an Avaya Communication Manager solution, Carousel was able to integrate Kaman's offices together on a single, IP-based telecommunications infrastructure. Carousel and Kaman worked together to replace over 200 different telephone system technologies in order to leverage VoIP over MPLS and gain the benefits of a centralized, IP-centric UC solution from Avaya.

"The challenge in tying all of these disparate locations together under a UC infrastructure was solved through a combination of software, network services and Avaya hardware," said Alex Pilpel, account executive, Carousel Industries. "All of the remote offices are now connected back to Kaman's data center at their headquarters in Connecticut, and calls can be routed from one office to another. During peak times for individual offices, calls can be automatically directed to an office receiving a smaller volume of calls, improving customer service."

Using Avaya Communication Manager 5.2 with CMS R16, Kaman has also increased its productivity. Customer calls are now more easily directed to the appropriate expert, and Kaman also receives crucial intelligence on the number of inbound and outbound calls, how long each person spends on a call, and if customers ever have to wait.

"We have close to 900 people answering phones across the country, and the solution developed with Carousel enables us to dynamically and automatically adapt to changing volume conditions in each branch while also making our agents better equipped to give the highest standards of customer service," said John Walshaw, manager, corporate telecommunications at Kaman Corp.

Ensuring Multi-Regional Business Continuity
The contact center solution also ensures business continuity in case of disaster or inclement weather. In case of office closures, the contact center system redirects calls to the next regional office established through a hierarchy.

To ensure business continuity, Kaman has a highly redundant infrastructure, and it continues to extend the infrastructure with additional levels of functionality and redundancy. In deploying the Avaya unified contact center solution, Kaman was also able to implement redundant, centralized SIP trunking providing phone services to any geography and eliminating traditional local phone services.

Implementation of the project began in fourth quarter of 2009 following the deployment of an Avaya UC system at Kaman's Bloomfield, Conn. headquarters. By the second quarter of 2010, Carousel had deployed the first pilot systems in regional offices. After the pilot phase, Carousel and Kaman deployed four to five sites per week, each week until the final sites were completed in June 2011 — ahead of schedule.

In recognition of the innovative use of information technology, Kaman was awarded a place on the 2011 InformationWeek 500 as a top technology innovator for the contact center solution and enhancement of operational efficiencies, productivity and customer service.

About Carousel
Carousel Industries designs, delivers and supports technology solutions that become the foundation of our clients' businesses. This includes unified communications, virtualization, Voice over IP (VoIP), video conferencing and collaboration and data infrastructure solutions. Since Carousel was founded in 1992 we've grown an average of 30% - 50% per year with estimated 2011 revenues of approximately $300 million. Today we have over 5,000 customers, including 35 of the Fortune 100. Carousel has been recognized by both VAR and CRN Magazines as one of the top technology integrators in the US and we've been listed in the Inc. 500/5000 six times.

Carousel is headquartered in Exeter, RI with over 1,000 employees working from offices in 23 locations across the US, including over 250 service technicians deployed across the country. For more information visit http://www.carouselindustries.com

SOURCE Carousel Industries