From the desk of the CEO

In this edition of Wavelength, we’re celebrating our recent win at the 2008 ACOMM Awards, where our commitment to customer service was recognised. We won the Commitment to Customer Service Award for a large organisation, beating fellow finalists Telstra and Vodafone.
See Article.

Still on the awards front, we’ve also just submitted for the annual HR awards in an effort to provide recognition to our HR team who amongst many other activities, provide the underlying support and infrastructure to all Uecomm staff in adopting the customer service mantra into every area of the business. We shall keep you posted with our progress.

Uecomm also continues to deliver world class technology to Australian businesses and we are happy to announce we are actively deploying new customers on our new VPLS platform, launched in July. Early feedback from customers about the network is positive. Implementing customer networks onto VPLS is the responsibility of the Customer Implementation team and our recent membership of the AIPM is a positive step to equip our Project Managers with even greater levels of competency in this area. See Article.

In this issue we also review two very different customers, both of whom are benefiting from working with one of Australia’s leading data specialists.

Benetas, one of Victoria's foremost not-for-profit aged care services providers and Wellcom, one of Australia’s leading production businesses discuss the business benefits they have achieved from their new networks. Both chose Uecomm for its leading Ethernet network delivery with simple, fast and easy to understand protocols and technology.

Until next time,

Cheers,

Ian Noble
Acting CEO, Uecomm

return to top

Uecomm scores top gong at industry award night

In August Uecomm was recognised at the annual ACOMM Awards, winning the category “Commitment to Customer Service (Large)”.

Uecomm was chosen from a first-class list of finalists including Telstra and Vodafone, specifically for its demonstration of its customer value proposition. The ACOMM Awards recognise excellence in the communications industry.

During a 12-month strategic review, Uecomm worked with customers to identify the critical service interactions that would allow market differentiation and create its customer mantra. The review outlined five key value propositions to drive the customer mantra including Flexibility, Care and Accountability, Service, Professional Delivery and Relationship.

Living the mantra is reinforced throughout the organisation to every employee, where the value "Customer Focus" is automatically included as a key performance indicator on every staff member's Performance and Development Review. In a recent staff engagement survey the company achieved a statistically significant increase in all customer focus metrics including a strong belief that Uecomm is responsive to the needs of their customers.

Uecomm’s Acting CEO and Director of Technology, Ian Noble said the award was testament to the hard work of the team at Uecomm who has embedded the customer service mantra into every level of the business.

“Our business begins and ends with the customer. We have built our brand on customer service and feel honoured that our commitment to customer service has been recognised with such a prestigious award.”

return to top

Case Study – Benetas

Founded in 1948 by the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, Benetas is one of Victoria's foremost not-for-profit aged care services providers with a long and proud history of caring for the elderly in our community.

Benetas operates an integrated network of specialist residential care facilities, day and overnight respite centres, dementia specific and palliative care services and an extensive community care program that provides care and support to older people who wish to continue living in their own homes.

With plans to roll out a VoIP network across all sites and a clinical care package to manage all of the organisation’s client records, Benetas engaged carrier grade Ethernet service provider, Uecomm to deliver a solution to meet the required minimum network uptime of 99.9% plus.

Benetas required a highly resilient network solution, Internet and an infrastructure protected disaster recovery site that has the inherent scalability to roll out future planned applications requiring high network availability.

Benetas’ previous network was ADSL and highly contended. Further, it was difficult and at times impossible to isolate where network issues were occurring within the network as the services were provided by third parties; ultimately impacting on the network’s uptime and business productivity.

Uecomm delivered an Ethernet solution to connect Benetas’ 26 sites including its head office and disaster recovery site in Southbank, Melbourne. The 1:1 uncontested network comprises a Uecomm fibre link from head office to the disaster recovery centre and the sites located in greater metropolitan Melbourne, with a mix of ADSL and SHDSL services to the sites in regional Victoria.

The network design has multi-diverse redundancy, as Uecomm also provided a secondary head office link which fails over to their data centre. This design adds further resilience to the network virtually eradicating network outages.

According to Edward Hore, IT manager for Benetas, moving to a carrier grade service provider was a big decision for the business, but necessary to deliver the business’ IT strategy.

“We knew we required a greater level of IT investment to deliver the applications we need. An Ethernet network enables us to protect the sensitivity of the information we manage and deliver on our minimum requirement for 99% uptime.

“As we move to roll out VoIP and our clinical care package, we are confident that Uecomm’s network will support our requirements and will ensure a smooth rollout,” he said.

Uecomm’s Director of Products & Marketing, Garry White explains that the move to an Ethernet network has allowed Benetas to increase its level of services for its clients.

“Benetas’ new clinical care package requires the greatest levels of network availability to access patient medical records at any time. This development simply would not have been possible with the previous network which was highly contended and suffered with fault isolation and resolution.

“We were happy to work with Benetas to deliver a tailored solution to deliver on both its financial and operational requirements,” he said.

return to top

Case study – Wellcom

LAN technology has moved in leaps and bounds since Wellcom, one of Australia’s leading production businesses, first launched in Australia in 2000.

Providing specialist services to advertising agencies, corporations and to leading retailers, Wellcom’s business is dependent on the efficient transfer of large image files between its clients, media agencies and team of designers.

Prior to the introduction of carrier-grade Ethernet technology in Australia, Wellcom would need to convert low-resolution images for client review and approval and then change them back to high-resolution images after each stage of editing as the bandwidth available on legacy ISDN and Frame Relay infrastructure simply did not allow for the transfer of large image files.

As pioneers in the industry, Wellcom recognised that a high bandwidth solution would allow it to cut down on time delays and increase efficiency, while also leading to fewer errors in finished artwork.

Wellcom invested in a combination of both licensed microwave and Ethernet technology depending on the location and cost of deployment at each site.

While microwave technology offers similar benefits as Ethernet, it requires the installation and management of the external receiver hardware, which comes with added costs and investment of the business’ IT staff to manage the link.

In comparison, Ethernet is simple to administer, more affordable and easily scalable to meet the needs of any business.

According to Wellcom’s Network and Communications Manager, Robert Broomhead, Ethernet technology has provided the business with a scalable network that provides greater bandwidth and capacity while reducing the businesses’ investment in additional IT management resources.

“Our network is constantly changing as we add new clients. Ethernet technology allows us to easily deploy new links to our client’s offices without the need for us to employ external contractors to develop or manage the service,” he said.

The high bandwidth available on Ethernet has also allowed Wellcom to achieve greater efficiencies and reductions in errors.

“In the past, we would need to substitute high-resolution images with low-resolution images for client review and approval, as we couldn’t send large files on the network.

“Our increased network capacity has eliminated the need to do this, so we now see less errors in finished artwork, spend less time in the editing suite, as well as reduce the amount of versions for customer approval, which also benefits our customers,” he said.

return to top

Uecomm joins AIPM

Uecomm has recently become a major corporate member of the Australian Institute of Project Management.

The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) is the peak body for project management in Australia.  Formed in 1976 as the Project Managers' Forum, AIPM has been instrumental in progressing the profession of project management in Australia over the past 30 years.

AIPM’s role is to improve the knowledge, skills and competence of project team members, project managers and project directors, all of whom play a key role in the achievement of business objectives, not just project objectives.

Major corporate membership entitles Uecomm to nominate at least 30 staff as members, and membership paves the way to certification. The AIPM’s Professional Competency Standards for Project Management program for individuals allows for three levels of certification. Some Uecomm people are already RegPM and MPD Certified.  In addition, we are working with Swinburne to custom design a course that will allow our people to become certified at all three levels.

The AIPM also offers PMO certification, which is a Project Management Competency certification for organisations; this is certainly something Uecomm will be aiming to acquire in the future.

return to top