Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Aviva Augments Operations with New Vodafone Contract

July 24, 2014

When a vendor has been supplying a company for 17 years, that's no small feat, particularly in these days of rapid change and economic turmoil. But the association between Vodafone and Aviva has been going on that long itself, and is set to continue as Aviva, the global insurance firm, brings back Vodafone to set up a new array of communications services to keep the company on the leading edge of contact capability.


The agreement—at last report valued in the multi-million pound range and set to run over the course of the next seven years—will see Vodafone bring in a complete set of tools for Aviva, including both the provision and the management of a new cloud-based contact center. Also included is a cloud storage system, and both fixed and remote connectivity mechanisms to bridge the gap between Aviva's U.K and Ireland arms. The contact center, meanwhile, is set to accommodate fully 12,000 Aviva employees at once, making it a large-scale system by most any standard. Meanwhile, during 2015, Vodafone will step up the operation still further, offering in a set of collaboration tools as part of the Vodafone One Net unified communications (UC) suite of tools, ranging from things like document sharing and instant messaging tools as well as some conferencing systems.

Word from either side of the arrangement seems universally positive, reasonable given the two firms' long mutual association. Aviva's Nick Amin, who serves as chief operations and transformations officer said “We are delighted to be building on our long and successful relationship with Vodafone, who have been a partner to Aviva for 17 years, and excited to be working together at this important time in Aviva’s transformation. This development builds on our existing relationship and strengthens the understanding and alignment between our two companies.” Meanwhile, Jan Geldmacher, Vodafone's chief executive for global enterprise, offered agreement, saying “We welcome the opportunity to extend and expand our close working partnership with Aviva. These sophisticated and innovative technologies will help transform how Aviva operates, further differentiating the company from its competitors.”

A company with as many employees as Aviva has quite clearly needs a way to communicate back and forth within the organization itself. But a company with as sizable a customer-facing contact apparatus as Aviva has—being that it's an insurance company and all—clearly also needs a powerful solution for incoming calling. There are only so many firms that can provide all of that under one roof, and Vodafone was clearly one of these. Throw in the fact that Aviva and Vodafone have been working together for almost two decades and it really should have been a foregone conclusion the two would work together on such an extensive project. Vodafone likely already understands Aviva's operations better than any other firm, and has clearly kept its product line updated sufficiently that Aviva wouldn't have had a need to go looking elsewhere in the first place.  Perhaps better yet, this upgrade should allow Aviva to better serve its own customer base, allowing call center agents to bring in help as needed with instant messaging and conferencing tools, and improve the overall contact by being able to access documents about the clients in question quickly.

Only time will tell just how well this ultimately works out, but between the long association between the two firms, the updated product lines and the clear necessity of such tools, the end result should be positive on all sides.




Edited by Maurice Nagle



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