Umbro kitted out with Avaya

Darren Bent models England's World Cup kit - currently being used in South Africa - unlike Bent

When sportswear maker and England World Cup kit provider Umbro moved to a new head office, it decided not to keep its old private branch exchange (PBX)-based comminications system.

Umbro is a subsidiary of footwear and clothing giant Nike, which is already part way through a global Avaya deployment, so using Avaya Communications Manager to replace the old PBX made good business sense, according to Umbro IT operations manager Danny Healey.

"Avaya is Nike's platform of choice. It's already been rolled out in the US, and it's being rolled out in other territories," he said.

Another reason for Umbro replacing its legacy PBX was that it had reached capacity.

Healey said it took just three months to get the new system up and running, without any service disruption.

As well as re-fitting its UK headquarters in Cheadle, Cheshire with the new communications system, Umbro is linking into Nike's Netherlands European headquarters. It is also looking to link up with other branch offices.

One advantage of the system is that new users can now be added in seconds rather than minutes.

Day-to-day system management now involves a Windows-based interface rather than requiring manual configuration.

Healey said that capacity issues are now gone, since Avaya Communication Manager can scale to about 36,000 extensions.

Umbro replaced all its old phone handsets, including those at its contact centre, with headsets, and installed new conference phones into its main meeting rooms.

"In some of the smaller conference rooms we're using a standard cost effective IP phone on hands-free," said Healey.

Regardless of which office staff speak to globally, the call can be routed through the Avaya PBX network to ensure Umbro pays the least amount possible for that call.

As for the future, Healey said that there were plans to expand the rollout into the retail stores, customer experience sites and logistics and warehousing operations.

Additionally, Umbro plans to roll out Avaya One-X, an IP soft phone for Windows PCs and laptops to get further productivity gains and communication cost reductions.

Umbro's remote workers and mobile staff will then be able to use One-X for click-to-call operation from Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, standard web pages or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-based directories.

Umbro has pioneered sports tailoring for 86 years, and the 1966 World Cup winning team wore Umbro throughout the tournament.