Importer unifies staff with unified comms

ANZ-based chemical importer Redox has deployed a new communications system to improve coordination of its staff across offices and between countries.

Redox has more than 200 staff spread across eight offices throughout Australia and New Zealand, with head office based in Sydney. The company imports and distributes chemical raw materials to manufacturers in several industries.

With the majority of management, finance and purchasing functions undertaken in Sydney, the company found that employees based in the branch sales offices felt isolated from decision making. Also, with a number of staff working from home and out on the road, enhancing and simplifying the communications between all of the offices was necessary to bring cohesion to the business and boost morale.

Redox decided a new communications system could help reduce the challenges involved in coordinating staff across offices, as well as to cope with the business growth rate.

The company required an internally administered communications platform that could be integrated with the existing email system, which employees were already comfortable using.

Redox ultimately went with IPFX’s Director VoIP system.

Richard Coneliano, information technology manager at Redox, says: “It has a great presence feature which allows everyone in the company to see what everyone else is doing in real time and is compatible with the Cisco voice gateways that already existed.”

Following implementation of the VoIP system, Redox employees now benefit from the improved communications linking the offices, with fewer people spending time on hold or listening to busy signals when phoning each other.

Staff at various Redox locations also embraced the integration into Microsoft Outlook quickly, Coneliano says.

“The platform integrated perfectly with Microsoft Outlook, a system all of our employees feel comfortable with.”

With a single provider for all communications, employees can deal with all requests at one interface and prioritise them easily and quickly.

Employees based in remote locations now feel more connected to head office with the real-time visibility of phone status and location presence.

Redox’s customers have also benefited from the implementation of unified communications, with the centralised and shared switchboard, meaning less time is spent on hold.

Overall, the system helps the company’s distributed staff feel more like a team, while the company explores new business avenues.

“As we continue to grow locally and into new markets in Asia, and as our workforce becomes more dispersed around the world, on the road or working from home, the IPFX solution will help us continue to feel like one unified team,” Coneliano says.