Royal Shakespeare Company rolls out IP telephony

VoIP kit will help RSC cope with rising demand for tickets

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC’s) IT department has taken advantage of a £113m redevelopment programme to implement a centralised IP telephony system that will connect all calls between the theatre group’s sites in Stratford-upon-Avon and London.

The new telephony system, due for full completion in 2010, will bring telecoms under the IT department’s full control, reduce call costs and increase the RSC’s commitment to customer service, according to head of IT Chris O’Brien.

“We needed a good communication system with in-built flexibility to support the many people that move around the organisation,” said O’Brien. “Changing the RCS network to support IP telephony system is expensive but the redevelopment gave us the opportunity because we would have had to make significant changes to the system anyway.”

IP telephony uses the TCP/IP protocol popularised by the internet to transmit digital voice data. The integration of the telephone software and computer networks is designed to give the IT department more control over the organisation’s calls.

“As soon as telecoms was brought under our control in 2004, we felt we couldn’t continue with the system,” said O’Brien. “It involved paying a specialist telecom engineer whenever we needed to make changes to the system, such as when people joined the company or moved desks.”

The RSC will upgrade from Avaya’s Definity cabling system to a new IP telephony solution based on Avaya’s Communications Manager Server and Gateway technology. Business communications firm Call Centre Technology (CCT) will help the RSC design the solution and manage the phased deployment, said O’Brien.

CCT will also assist the IT department to relocate a large number of the RSC’s 700 staff from two existing sites in Stratford-upon-Avon to a new theatre that will be completed in 2010, said O’Brien.

O'Brien said he had chosen CCT because he trusted they would give good customer service. “It was clear from CCT's proposal and its in-house surveys of staff that it managers are geared towards keeping customer happy and dealing with them,” he said.

The IP system will initially be deployed to the RSC’s three main sites in Stratford, and managed centrally from the new Chapel Lane site where a primary communications server will be installed.

At the Courtyard Theatre there is an Avaya S8300 Media Server in Local Survivable Processer (LSP) mode, to ensure the site’s system is protected if the main switch is lost at Chapel Lane.

The cost of deploying the new system is expected to be about £175,000, said O’Brien

Cost savings on voice calls will start to be realised in 2010 when the system is extended from the RSC’s main sites in Stratford to its two London locations. Voice calls will effectively “ride for free” over the company’s existing data network, said O’Brien, who also has future plans to extend connectivity to home workers and mobile staff.

Meanwhile, the administrative load on the IT department will be reduced because of the ease with which new users can be added to the system, and it will also benefit from lower installation costs for cabling.

Customers should experience a higher level of service because of the increased operational efficiency IP telephony allows, said O’Brien.

The system has already helped the RSC deal with an unusually big increase in ticket sales over the summer period, and will ensure the company can deal with peaks in traffic that new plays bring, for example the recent sell-out production of Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.