YMCA Victoria looks to standardise staff collaboration with move to Avaya Cloud Office

Aiming to standardise collaboration among its 5,000-strong workforce, the Y in Victoria has announced that it is to install Avaya Cloud Office technology.

The Y hope that installation of the RingCentral communications and collaboration platform will result in it reducing information and communication technology costs while providing greater access to childcare, fitness and youth support services through consolidated, cloud-based communications and collaboration.

As part of its continued growth, the organisation has expanded to more than 150 sites in Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and Queensland, including youth services, swim schools, early learning centres and recreational facilities.

The addition of the new venues, some of which have allowed it to launch new services, saw the Y inherit multiple disparate administration, collaboration and contact centre technology systems from previous venue operators which risked operational silos across the facilities impacting around 5,000 staff and volunteers. The introduction of all-in-one communication solution Avaya Cloud Office has enabled the Y to centralise its teams and processes, which has boosted productivity and subsequently increased access to its services for the community.

Explaining that the move will help the organisation strengthen community ties, allowing support services to ensure consistent and reliable communications during periods of external disruption while also reducing operational costs, the Y’s General Manager - Technology and Strategy, Shane Riddle stated “our mission is to provide the opportunity for each person to be healthy, happy and connected.

“A collaborative workforce is essential in achieving this goal and ensuring communities have easy access to our youth, fitness and support services particularly during challenging times such as lockdowns.

“Avaya was a natural fit for us as the outcomes offered by its systems align with our mission. Through better connected teams, we can increase our visibility within local communities and provide more ways for people to connect with the Y at their convenience, bringing us together even when external challenges force us apart.”

The Y recognised the need to create a consolidated communications environment to enable collaboration for its workforce, whether in offices, community facilities and increasingly from home. Further, the organisation decided to consolidate its communication and collaboration workflows to improve operations and reduce costs.

The cloud-based Avaya Cloud Office platform is an all-in-one, ‘office-in-a-pocket’ that provides the Y with one unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) app that enables collaboration across multiple channels, allowing employees to call, message, meet, video conference, file-share and more within one environment.

Avaya Cloud Office has already provided the Y with reprieve for managing both internal and external disruptions, including lockdowns, by streamlining communication and collaboration capabilities. Staff are now able to work from anywhere across devices, including iPads, iPhones and iOS, ensuring uninterrupted productivity and connectivity.

Looking ahead, Riddle said streamlined communication will bring various day-to-day advantages to the Y and local communities, with less administrative work meaning that staff will have more time to engage with community members face-to-face.

He added “the delivery of our services will improve significantly this year, which, due to heightened demand on the back of the pandemic, has never been more important. Our teams will experience less of what we don’t want, which is time spent completing excessive administration, and more of what we do best - efficient and personalised access to youth, fitness, recreation and health programs and activities.

“For example, getting kids into the pool and teaching them to swim will become a much smoother process with all bookings, cancellations and payments being consolidated.”