UK exhibitions firm The NEC Group has built new contact centres and rolled out converged networks for 2,000 users employing Alcatel-Lucent technology in a bid to improve customer relations and cut costs.

The six-month deployment, completed by Alcatel's business partner Amillan, included an 80-seat contact centre designed to handle ticket sales, and a new voice and data platform servicing NEC's 2,000 employees, said Alcatel-Lucent.

The IP telephony solution is based on the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise platform and OmniTouch Contact Center Premium software.

"The evolution of The NEC Group box office into The Ticket Factory last year meant that we required a more advanced approach to contact centre telephony," said Andrew McManus, IT director at The NEC Group.

"Given the obvious cost savings and efficiencies that could be achieved through convergence, it made sense to transform the entire network and migrate to IP."