Rapid Circle helps Village Roadshow migrate to new communications infrastructure
Working together with Rapid Circle and Microsoft, Village Roadshow has been able to convert its ailing communications infrastructure into state-of-the-art, ultimately benefiting its staff and the millions of people that visit its cinema’s and theme parks across the nation.
For many, Australian entertainment and media company Village Roadshow is a household name. The company owns cinemas, exhibitions, and theme parks (including Sea World and Warner Bros Movie World), and also has a range of media production and distribution ventures.
The need for change
With an incredibly diverse and dynamic range of brands, Village Roadshow recognised there were inefficiencies and redundancies in its internal communications infrastructure network, which hampered communication within the organisation.
Ben Parker, IT Operations Manager at Village Roadshow, explained: “Our 15-year-old communications infrastructure was proving unfit for the business. Not only was it requiring cumbersome daily restarts, but our handsets operated on six different systems. This complex, legacy environment was costly to maintain, and it wasn’t conducive to providing a reliable service.”
In response, Village Roadshow’s IT department set out to adopt a new system capable of promoting intelligent and robust communications. The company picked Microsoft as its preferred IT solution, and Rapid Circle as its implementation partner.
Rapid Circle helped replace its legacy platforms, including handsets located at all 32 of Village Roadshow’s cinema sites, introducing Microsoft Teams phone system to the entire business. Deploying the Microsoft-powered unified communications platform earned the entertainment organisation a centralised voice, video, and messaging platform.
In scenarios where existing platforms could not be replaced, Rapid Circle’s approach ensured tight integration, an example being phones supporting guests in Sea World Resort’s more than 400 apartments.
Parker: “The modern telephony capabilities grant our field, customer service, operations and administrative staff a single phone system, and the ability to make, receive, and transfer calls from anywhere.”
“Previously, our main reception phone was so plagued by issues that around half of external callers trying to connect with us were successful. Transfer issues within head office were also a common issue being reported. We’ve managed to resolve these key issues and more with Rapid Circle, resulting in a better experience for our customers and staff alike.”
Rapid Circle’s approach to the deployment also provided change management support for Village Roadshow employees. This was not only instrumental in completing the telephony project, but also put Village Roadshow Group in a position to get across best practices and reduce the learning curve.
Commenting on the project, George Stavrakakis, Managing Director for Australia at Rapid Circle, said: “Village Roadshow has certainly exemplified the power of prioritising communications to finetune its well-oiled capabilities. From a reduction in costs associated with IT management, to improved user experience for staff and customers alike, the transformation of its telephony infrastructure is supporting its greater efforts to prioritise productivity and safety at every touchpoint.”
Established in 2008, Rapid Circle is an award-winning Microsoft partner with over 450 staff globally, more than 120 of whom are based in Australia and New Zealand.
