UK health and social care staff recruitment agency
HCL is using call re-routing
software to ensure its payroll systems continue to function in an
emergency.
The HCL group, which has an annual turnover of £140m, has made
13 acquisitions in just over three years resulting in the company
running 27 different payroll systems.
At the beginning of 2008, the group implemented a
fax-to-email service to convert faxed timesheets into emails,
which are fed in to the main payroll system to automate staff
payment.
HCL has set up its voice call re-routing software to ensure that
in the event of a disaster, all inbound timesheet faxes could
be redirected instantaneously.
The company implemented the BCM Lite software from GemaTech in
August last year to eliminate a potential five day gap in telephone
communications.
The decision to accelerate the company's disaster recovery plan
was made after the discovery of two car bombs in central London at
the end of June 2007 which barred access to its Haymarket
headquarters.
Luke Harding, group IT manager at HCL, said a lack of
flexibility in re-routing calls because of the "fractured telephony
infrastructure" was a major gap in the
business continuity strategy because of the company's reliance
on telephone contact with customers to do business.
"Re-routing calls would have taken up to five days to set up,
but with BCM Lite call re-routing software from GemaTech, it can be
done instantaneously," he said.
HCL support staff are now able to access the BCM Lite
application remotely to re-route calls and set up recorded messages
on the system.
Harding said deploying the software had been a quick and low
cost way of addressing business continuity concerns.
He said the software had brought the additional benefit of
consolidating the group's diverse telephony infrastructure ahead of
a planned phased migration to a central voice-over-IP system by the
end of 2008.
The software has also enabled HCL to re-route calls from newly
acquired social work recruitment companies and conduct various
marketing campaigns using the messaging facility.