Sun Life Financial dials into new world-class conferencing solution

Leading international financial services organization turns to Avaya to improve global communications and drastically reduce cost

Challenge

Sun Life Financial has a large global

footprint, with offices in North America,

Europe, and Asia. With a network of

operations as established and extensive

as this, flawless communication

throughout the organization is

imperative in ensuring employees are

able to provide clients with the best

possible financial products and services.

That’s why Sun Life Financial knew it had

to upgrade its outsourced conferencing

system, as the existing solution wasn’t

able to facilitate communication at the

level that the organization needed it to.

“We have more than 15,000 employees

worldwide and conference calls are one

of the primary ways they stay in contact

with each other,” says Robert Miller,

AVP of Interaction and Call Center

Technologies at Sun Life Financial.

“We were using a series of external

providers to host our conference calls,

which frankly cost us a lot of money for the

service we received,” he continues.

“As our need to use audio conferencing

grew globally, we started to receive an

increase in the number of reports of voice

quality issues, plus conference calls

typically started late since the chairperson

didn’t know who had joined the

conference call. Privacy was also a concern

for us. Leveraging an external third party

conferencing system meant there was a

risk that non-Sun Life conference

participants could accidentally join our

conference calls. With a dedicated

Sun Life system, this potential could be

eliminated.”

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Challenge

Sun Life Financial was

outsourcing conference

calls to a third-party

provider with

technology that didn’t

meet the company’s

changing business

communication

requirements.

To meet expanding

global business needs,

increase the quality of

global conference calls

and minimize expenses,

the company realized

it needed a new

conferencing solution.

Solution

Turning to Avaya

for a world-class

collaboration solution

in Avaya Aura®

Conferencing,

Sun Life Financial now

has an affordable,

efficient and intuitive

conferencing system

that seamlessly

connects employees

across its global offices.

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Also, with large conference calls

occurring and many people dialing in

from around the world, the available

trunk capacity was exhausted;

therefore, many Sun Life employees

couldn’t receive inbound calls or

make outbound calls during peak

periods, affecting overall productivity.

Solution

Knowing a change was needed, Miller

and his team turned to Avaya for a

solution that would allow them to run

their teleconferences smoothly and

more affordably.

“The Sun Life Financial team wanted a

solution where they could exercise

more control over their resources and

reduce the overall WAN trunking

requirements,” says Ross Pellizzari,

President and Managing Director,

Avaya Canada. “They wanted to

streamline the process by bringing

conferencing in house, improve the

overall quality of their calls and

perhaps most importantly, save

some money.”

“We looked at what other companies

offered, but we decided that Avaya

Aura Conferencing was the right

solution for us,” says Miller.

“Avaya Aura Conferencing easily

integrated with our Avaya Aura

SIP-based infrastructure and offered

some great benefits that previously

weren’t available to us.”

Avaya Aura Conferencing creates

easy, real-time conferencing and

collaboration, and offers scalable

conferencing for businesses of every

size. It is easily deployed on premises

for audio only, or as an integrated

combination of audio, video, and web

conferencing. Integration with unified

communications applications lets

users leverage desktop applications

and interfaces for increased

conference control. It also allows for

media cascading, which aggregates

all local streams into a single

outbound connection, reducing WAN

bandwidth traffic and stress on the

central media server – perfect for a

company that has offices around the

world connecting to a single call.

Avaya Aura Conferencing also

delivers capabilities like audio and

web conferencing, high-definition

video conferencing, document-based

collaboration, and sharing of

desktops and applications.

Video-enabled web conferencing

offers slide show presentations and

document-based collaboration,

sharing of applications and desktops,

and video streaming.

And better still, by eliminating the

fees associated with external

conferencing providers, the solution

helps companies cut costs and realize

a rapid return on investment.

“We looked at what other

companies offered, but we

decided that Avaya Aura

Conferencing was the right

solution for us. Avaya Aura

Conferencing easily

integrated with our Avaya

Aura SIP-based

infrastructure and offered

some great benefits that

previously weren’t available

to us.”

– Robert Miller, AVP of Interaction and Call

Center Technologies at Sun Life Financial.

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Benefits

Cost Savings

Perhaps the biggest benefit of

Sun Life Financial’s new multi-modal

system is the significant cost savings.

Prior to the launch of Avaya Aura

Conferencing, the company was

spending a great deal on hosting

services; however, with the reduction

of the overall global WAN trunking

requirements, this cost has been

greatly diminished.

“We reduced our external

conferencing cost by 95 per cent –

insourcing our audio conferencing

service has reduced our global audio

conferencing costs by one-third,”

says Miller. “The Avaya Aura

Conferencing solution essentially paid

for itself in less than eight months of

being deployed. It has been a great

return on our investment.”

Simplicity

The new solution has created

operational efficiencies for all

Sun Life employees. The team can

now access each other with a seven

digit number – something they

weren’t previously able to do – and

conferences now begin much quicker,

as the host is able to track who has

dialed in to participate. Everyone has

access to the same collaboration

resources with the same user

experience.

“Employees can connect to the

conference call simply by using the

host’s phone number as the access

code, which can easily be found in the

host’s email signature. Our users love

having local access to what is a

centralized service. The host is able to

organize the call quickly and simply

by using a browser, instead of having

to take a verbal roll call of who is

present and participating, which in

the past wasted the first five minutes

of our meetings,” says Miller.

“Entry tones have been eliminated

and we’ve had users report significant

improvements in audio quality;

having a visual indication as to who is

speaking also adds important context

to the call.”

Security

Avaya Aura Conferencing creates a

greater level of security than what the

previous conferencing solution could

provide.

“It’s a great relief to know that our

calls are now 100 per cent private and

confidential,” says Miller. “The new

conferencing system offers a web-

based Personal Agent that allows the

chairperson and participants to see

who is on the conference call and who

is speaking.”

Scalability

Because Avaya offerings are versatile

and scalable, there are a host of other

Avaya Aura Conferencing features

that Sun Life is planning on utilizing in

the future.

“We’re looking at the web

collaboration feature, video, and one

number access,” says Miller. “There

are many capabilities in Aura

Conferencing that can make our

employees’ jobs easier.”

“The Avaya Aura

Conferencing solution

essentially paid for itself

in less than eight months

of being deployed.

It has been a great return

on our investment.”

– Robert Miller, AVP of Interaction and Call

Center Technologies at Sun Life Financial.

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ABOUT

SUN LIFE FINANCIAL

Sun Life Financial is a leading

international financial services

organization providing a diverse range

of protection and wealth accumulation

products and services to individuals

and corporate customers. Sun Life

Financial and its partners have

operations in key markets worldwide,

including Canada, the United States,

the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong

Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia,

India, China, Australia, Singapore,

Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of

June 30, 2013, the Sun Life Financial

group of companies had total assets

under management of $591 billion.

For more information please visit

www.sunlife.com.

Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the

Toronto (TSX), New York (NYSE) and

Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under

the ticker symbol SLF.