Sun Life Financial dials into new world-class conferencing solution
Leading international financial services organization turns to Avaya to improve global communications and drastically reduce cost
Challenge
Sun Life Financial has a large global
footprint, with offices in North America,
Europe, and Asia. With a network of
operations as established and extensive
as this, flawless communication
throughout the organization is
imperative in ensuring employees are
able to provide clients with the best
possible financial products and services.
That’s why Sun Life Financial knew it had
to upgrade its outsourced conferencing
system, as the existing solution wasn’t
able to facilitate communication at the
level that the organization needed it to.
“We have more than 15,000 employees
worldwide and conference calls are one
of the primary ways they stay in contact
with each other,” says Robert Miller,
AVP of Interaction and Call Center
Technologies at Sun Life Financial.
“We were using a series of external
providers to host our conference calls,
which frankly cost us a lot of money for the
service we received,” he continues.
“As our need to use audio conferencing
grew globally, we started to receive an
increase in the number of reports of voice
quality issues, plus conference calls
typically started late since the chairperson
didn’t know who had joined the
conference call. Privacy was also a concern
for us. Leveraging an external third party
conferencing system meant there was a
risk that non-Sun Life conference
participants could accidentally join our
conference calls. With a dedicated
Sun Life system, this potential could be
eliminated.”
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Challenge
Sun Life Financial was
outsourcing conference
calls to a third-party
provider with
technology that didn’t
meet the company’s
changing business
communication
requirements.
To meet expanding
global business needs,
increase the quality of
global conference calls
and minimize expenses,
the company realized
it needed a new
conferencing solution.
Solution
Turning to Avaya
for a world-class
collaboration solution
in Avaya Aura®
Conferencing,
Sun Life Financial now
has an affordable,
efficient and intuitive
conferencing system
that seamlessly
connects employees
across its global offices.
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Also, with large conference calls
occurring and many people dialing in
from around the world, the available
trunk capacity was exhausted;
therefore, many Sun Life employees
couldn’t receive inbound calls or
make outbound calls during peak
periods, affecting overall productivity.
Solution
Knowing a change was needed, Miller
and his team turned to Avaya for a
solution that would allow them to run
their teleconferences smoothly and
more affordably.
“The Sun Life Financial team wanted a
solution where they could exercise
more control over their resources and
reduce the overall WAN trunking
requirements,” says Ross Pellizzari,
President and Managing Director,
Avaya Canada. “They wanted to
streamline the process by bringing
conferencing in house, improve the
overall quality of their calls and
perhaps most importantly, save
some money.”
“We looked at what other companies
offered, but we decided that Avaya
Aura Conferencing was the right
solution for us,” says Miller.
“Avaya Aura Conferencing easily
integrated with our Avaya Aura
SIP-based infrastructure and offered
some great benefits that previously
weren’t available to us.”
Avaya Aura Conferencing creates
easy, real-time conferencing and
collaboration, and offers scalable
conferencing for businesses of every
size. It is easily deployed on premises
for audio only, or as an integrated
combination of audio, video, and web
conferencing. Integration with unified
communications applications lets
users leverage desktop applications
and interfaces for increased
conference control. It also allows for
media cascading, which aggregates
all local streams into a single
outbound connection, reducing WAN
bandwidth traffic and stress on the
central media server – perfect for a
company that has offices around the
world connecting to a single call.
Avaya Aura Conferencing also
delivers capabilities like audio and
web conferencing, high-definition
video conferencing, document-based
collaboration, and sharing of
desktops and applications.
Video-enabled web conferencing
offers slide show presentations and
document-based collaboration,
sharing of applications and desktops,
and video streaming.
And better still, by eliminating the
fees associated with external
conferencing providers, the solution
helps companies cut costs and realize
a rapid return on investment.
“We looked at what other
companies offered, but we
decided that Avaya Aura
Conferencing was the right
solution for us. Avaya Aura
Conferencing easily
integrated with our Avaya
Aura SIP-based
infrastructure and offered
some great benefits that
previously weren’t available
to us.”
– Robert Miller, AVP of Interaction and Call
Center Technologies at Sun Life Financial.
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Benefits
Cost Savings
Perhaps the biggest benefit of
Sun Life Financial’s new multi-modal
system is the significant cost savings.
Prior to the launch of Avaya Aura
Conferencing, the company was
spending a great deal on hosting
services; however, with the reduction
of the overall global WAN trunking
requirements, this cost has been
greatly diminished.
“We reduced our external
conferencing cost by 95 per cent –
insourcing our audio conferencing
service has reduced our global audio
conferencing costs by one-third,”
says Miller. “The Avaya Aura
Conferencing solution essentially paid
for itself in less than eight months of
being deployed. It has been a great
return on our investment.”
Simplicity
The new solution has created
operational efficiencies for all
Sun Life employees. The team can
now access each other with a seven
digit number – something they
weren’t previously able to do – and
conferences now begin much quicker,
as the host is able to track who has
dialed in to participate. Everyone has
access to the same collaboration
resources with the same user
experience.
“Employees can connect to the
conference call simply by using the
host’s phone number as the access
code, which can easily be found in the
host’s email signature. Our users love
having local access to what is a
centralized service. The host is able to
organize the call quickly and simply
by using a browser, instead of having
to take a verbal roll call of who is
present and participating, which in
the past wasted the first five minutes
of our meetings,” says Miller.
“Entry tones have been eliminated
and we’ve had users report significant
improvements in audio quality;
having a visual indication as to who is
speaking also adds important context
to the call.”
Security
Avaya Aura Conferencing creates a
greater level of security than what the
previous conferencing solution could
provide.
“It’s a great relief to know that our
calls are now 100 per cent private and
confidential,” says Miller. “The new
conferencing system offers a web-
based Personal Agent that allows the
chairperson and participants to see
who is on the conference call and who
is speaking.”
Scalability
Because Avaya offerings are versatile
and scalable, there are a host of other
Avaya Aura Conferencing features
that Sun Life is planning on utilizing in
the future.
“We’re looking at the web
collaboration feature, video, and one
number access,” says Miller. “There
are many capabilities in Aura
Conferencing that can make our
employees’ jobs easier.”
“The Avaya Aura
Conferencing solution
essentially paid for itself
in less than eight months
of being deployed.
It has been a great return
on our investment.”
– Robert Miller, AVP of Interaction and Call
Center Technologies at Sun Life Financial.
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ABOUT
SUN LIFE FINANCIAL
Sun Life Financial is a leading
international financial services
organization providing a diverse range
of protection and wealth accumulation
products and services to individuals
and corporate customers. Sun Life
Financial and its partners have
operations in key markets worldwide,
including Canada, the United States,
the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong
Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia,
India, China, Australia, Singapore,
Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of
June 30, 2013, the Sun Life Financial
group of companies had total assets
under management of $591 billion.
For more information please visit
www.sunlife.com.
Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the
Toronto (TSX), New York (NYSE) and
Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under
the ticker symbol SLF.