From the desk of the CEO

Welcome to Wavelength. We’ve got some great information to share with you in this edition.
Recently we announced the implementation of our new Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) platform and Logical Resource Manager (LRM) system, which as a combined solution is an Australian first.

The move to a VPLS platform was the next logical step for Uecomm, as the platform and associated system will deliver an improved customer experience including faster, more accurate network and service design through extensive automation facilities, and expected reductions in planned and unplanned outages. VPLS will allow us to provide a greater level of service to our customers and further demonstrates our commitment to provide the best in data networks to the Australian enterprise market.

In June, the Communications Alliance and Communications Day advised us that we were amongst the short listed nominees for an industry award for Commitment to Customer Service at the 2008 Acomm Awards.

The Acomm Awards recognise and celebrate excellence in the communications industry. To be short listed for such a prestigious award is an honor and testament to the inroads we are making embedding our culture, values, leadership charter and customer mantra throughout the company.

In this edition we feature case studies from two of our customers, leading clothing retailer M Webster Holdings and integrated financials services group, Australian Unity.

And in early June, our HR team hosted “Personal Growth Day” in both our Melbourne and Sydney offices. Personal Growth is one of Uecomm’s values, and the HR team created an event that demonstrated to our people what initiatives were in place to support their learning and development at Uecomm. All staff participated in the day displaying overwhelming levels of energy and enthusiasm.

Until next time,

Cheers,

Ian Noble
Acting CEO, Uecomm

return to top

Customer Profile – M Webster Holdings

M Webster Holdings is one of Australia’s leading clothing retailers with well-known labels such as Jigsaw, Marcs, Morrissey and David Lawrence.
With over 200 sites across Australia, the company required an Ethernet network solution to allow it to share information quickly between each store location and the warehouse to provide real-time access to stock levels.

Uecomm delivered an Ethernet WAN connecting M Webster Holdings’ 200 sites nationally to its Sydney data centre.

The new WAN replaced the business’ legacy PSTN dial-up service with a network capacity of just 56Kpbs. M Webster Holdings now has 512Kbps download capacity and 128Kbps upload capacity, delivering a significant impact on the business’ productivity by providing real time information sharing between retail sites and the warehouse.

The increased capacity and resilience provided by the Ethernet WAN has also facilitated the business’ trial of VoIP, CCTV and door counter technology which measures customer patronage and evaluates it against sales.

Adam Ioakim, Systems Accountant for M Webster Holdings says the business could not survive without the Uecomm Ethernet WAN.

“Put simply, our business now runs more efficiently. As a retail business with limited technology there was some reluctance to upgrade to the new network, but now we have it there is no way we could live without it,” said Mr Ioakim.

“Our old PSTN network was ridiculously slow and costly. The time it was taking to download data from our stores was impacting on the productivity of the business.

“Our warehouse now has instant access to our central database and all our stores, allowing for more efficient stock ordering and replenishment,” he said.

M Webster Holdings chose Uecomm to deliver its new network because it had demonstrated experience working with many of Australia’s big retailers, such as Bob Jane T Mart, Colorado and Crazy John’s.

“We needed a service provider who understood the retail environment,” explained Mr Ioakim. “In retail, our site locations are always changing as we build or relocate stores. Any downtime at store level is downtime to the business,” he explained.

“Uecomm understands this and approaches our network additions with flexibility to minimise our downtime wherever possible.”

Uecomm’s Director of Products & Marketing, Garry White says the retail sector is increasingly moving to Ethernet WANs to allow for instantaneous reporting, providing greater business efficiencies in inventory management and control.

“With a large number of sites requiring access to a centralised database, an Ethernet WAN allows for quicker access, greater capacity and increased performance across the business,” said Mr White.

“In addition, our retail clients find our 24/7 Network Operations Centre (NOC), which is staffed by experienced service engineers, a major advantage as it allows the stores to deal directly with the NOC, rather than the IT manager having to act as the go between to resolve network issues.

“It frees up the IT department’s time to get on with other important business issues,” he said.

return to top

Customer Profile – Australian Unity

Australian Unity is an integrated financial services group that has been caring for the financial and health care needs of Australians for over 165 years.

The business offers a mix of products and services including investment bonds and trusts; health, general and life insurances; and a range of savings accounts and mortgage loans.

Australian Unity also operates 13 retirement villages in Victoria and New South Wales and three dental clinics and an eye care centre in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

With an increasingly mobile workforce, Australian Unity required an IT solution to increase network speed and performance reliability.

Australian Unity sought Uecomm’s expertise to deliver a new Nortel wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) system and internet services to provide the business with greater network capacity and reliability.

As part of the WDM upgrade, Uecomm provisioned a fibre link to Australian Unity’s new disaster recovery centre in Clayton, which had been relocated from the previous disaster recovery centre in Melbourne’s CBD.

Uecomm is managing the internet services for the business with two internet links running on Uecomm fibre. Links scalable to 1Gbps were installed, one to the head office in South Melbourne managing web traffic and e-commerce, and the other to the disaster recovery site.

As part of the project, Optus has upgraded Australian Unity’s Wide Area Network and delivered OPI Secure Roam allowing the business’ mobile workforce to link securely to the network via the internet.

Rupesh Kapadia, Project Manager Business and Technology Services for Australian Unity says Uecomm’s design and implementation of the WDM and internet services has trebled the business’ network performance.

“The Uecomm design has improved the performance of our network by removing bottlenecks, particularly to the disaster recovery centre. This allows for much quicker access to our back up data which we usually need to retrieve two to three times per week,” explained Mr Kapadia.

With a very tight deadline to provision the new fibre link to the disaster recovery site at Clayton, Australian Unity has been impressed by Uecomm’s flexibility and customer focused approach.

“The project needed to be commissioned over Christmas and Uecomm delivered this to us on time. In fact, I received a call from our implementation manager at Uecomm on Boxing Day about an installation issue – it was resolved that day,” he said.

Australian Unity has also found the service from Uecomm’s 24/7 Network Operations Centre (NOC) provides peace of mind that any faults or delays are identified and rectified as quickly as possible.

“The customer service from the team of engineers at the NOC far exceeds our expectations. They are responsive, proactive and genuinely want to resolve the problem, which provides us with the confidence to get on with other business, rather than worrying about our infrastructure,” he said.

Uecomm’s Director of Products & Marketing, Garry White says the increasing popularity of mobile workforces means businesses need to have robust and resilient networks to provide reliable access for off-site staff while not impacting the security or efficiency of the business.

“Australian Unity wanted to improve the service level agreements (SLAs) that are inevitable with a Tier 3 service provider. As Uecomm manages our own network, we are able to deliver specialist data solutions like WDM and our customers like Australian Unity benefit from improved business continuity and disaster back-up,” said Mr White.

return to top

Supporting learning and development at Uecomm

To demonstrate Uecomm’s commitment to support staff learning and development a Personal Growth Day was held in both our Melbourne and Sydney offices.

Personal Growth is one of Uecomm’s seven core values that also include Customer Focus, Honest and Clear Communications, Trust and Integrity, Innovation, Team Spirit and Fun and Positive. Each value is represented by a colour and since the Personal Growth value is pink we asked everyone to display another of Uecomm’s values “fun and positive” and all dress in Pink on the day….which they embraced with gusto!

One session was held in Sydney and one in Melbourne and our Brisbane team was invited to join either session. We started the day with an overview of what we wanted to achieve and showed a video that recapped our last 18 months at Uecomm and the achievements we have made.

This was followed by some motivational speakers. John Stevens (State Sales Manager for VIC) highlighted the opportunities for career development that Uecomm has provided and the importance of mentors. John himself originally started in the Network Operations team over four years ago.

We were joined by inspirational top Australian ultra marathon runner, Pat Farmer, who entered the spirit of the day by wearing a pink tie! Pat spoke about determination, goal-setting and hard work, taking opportunities when they present themselves, and the importance of taking things one step at a time.

We ran a number of exercises and chat rooms throughout the day providing various learning opportunities for our staff including fibre splicing, online learning tutorials, financial planning, as well as key marketing and product information. All groups were rotated through the juggling sessions which highlighted important learning and development techniques such as the changes you can make simply by practicing a new skill for five minutes everyday.

We closed the day with a leadership and team building exercise that challenged our staff to use more of our key values including trust and integrity.

Both days were a tremendous success with the HR team receiving some really positive feedback:

“Taking a day away from our work isn’t always easy, but the motivation and inspiration I have gained from today will drive me for the next 6 months! Thank you!”

“It (Personal Growth Day) was fantastic; I told many of my friends about it. Well done for your planning and hard work in executing it! This is HR in action, something that doesn’t happen in most organisations!!!

“Thanks so much for including the banana benders. Great day, great spirit and vibe. Thanks for your team's hard work to make it a reality”

return to top