Coping with the effects of the Snow - The Storacall Solution

Most companies have to some degree or another a disaster recovery plan, although these are usually based on a scenario that means the building is not able to be occupied due to fire, flood etc. However the recent snow showed that a company can become non-operational simply because staff cannot reach the office.

Storacall likes to use all the equipment that it sells, so thanks to the ‘AlertMaster’ notification system, the Operations director was able to dial into the system and record a message to say that all staff should not bother trying to get to the office and simply work from home. Within minutes he was able to see that all the staff had acknowledged the message, so he knew that everyone was notified.

All members of staff were then able then use their computers at home to log into the main office server as well as the email and other applications via VPN. In addition staff then logged into the Storacall ‘TeleVantage’ telephone system and ACD, informing it that they were working from home, so all calls were directed to staff’s home telephones or mobiles. TeleVantage then automatically routed all incoming calls, both direct dialled calls and those calling either the Sales Queue or o Helpdesk Queue, to the relevant staff without the caller even being aware that their calls were being redirected all over the country.

The Sales and Helpdesk Managers were able to still see the same Queue statistics and able to record those calls or even to monitor the calls exactly as they were used to doing when in the office. All staff could see the status of their colleagues including those who were on a call, or who were for example on a break .

The net result was that although there wasn’t a single person in the office, it was business as usual for Storacall!

TeleVantage is an advanced telephone system with hundreds of features and application add-ons, making it probably the most powerful and flexible business phone system in its class. It is designed to integrate with IP and legacy environments and supports IP, analogue, digital and soft-phones. The AlertMaster is a personnel alert notification system which can contact large numbers of people in the shortest possible time via telephone, mobiles, pagers, ,email, SMS or fax. The system keeps trying all communications channels according to an individual’s preferences until contact is made.

6th March 2009