Helping Belong set up the full remote solution with AWS EUC

Mantel Group  were able to implement a solution that provided additional secure remote working options and an improved user experience for a global workforce.

Company Overview

Belong is Australia’s first carbon neutral mobile and internet provider. Belong believes that internet and mobile services should be straightforward and shouldn’t cost the earth.

They’re working to make our world a more inclusive place – by giving Australians the tools to reach across the planet at the touch of a button.

As a smaller, agile telecommunications provider within the Telstra fold, Belong is in a great position to test new ideas quickly and at scale.

The Problem

When COVID-19 hit, Belong’s entire operation was impacted, but in particular, its offshore customer support teams in India.The company struggled to resource teams as employees were forced to isolate and could not access legacy, on-premise systems. This posed a threat to Belong’s business at a time when internet demand was at an all-time high.

Belong sought support from AWS cloud partner, Mantel Group, to establish a remote work platform that enabled offshore teams to work securely and remotely from anywhere.

The remote solution needed to address six core business requirements:

The Solution

Belong engaged us to run a pilot with 40 users, during which time they were able to identify challenges.

The features of the pilot included:

Technology used

The Results

In eight weeks, we helped Belong set up the full remote solution, expanding from a pilot of 40 to over 350 agents. We were successful in introducing a new remote desktop solution for Belong’s customer service team during the business changes due to COVID-19, which has since expanded to more people within the company. The project was delivered within a two-month window; with business-as-usual operations maintained.

As a business, Belong achieved:

• Total business continuity. Remote teams were ‘switched on’ next day, with zero impact
• ‘Business as usual’ during subsequent lockdowns – no transition required
• A more secure SOE-standard workspace, with zero dependency on a office network
• Better agent experience:
  • Agents can track and record everything on one screen – no cutting, pasting or toggling between pages
  • Agents have full work flexibility – Belong leaves it up to individual team members to decide how they want to work, and the technology allows them to do that.
  • Great return to work policies to support future hiring and retention.
• Improved customer experience
  • Fully resourced teams despite ongoing external disruptions
  • More information at agents’ fingertips to respond to customer inquiries
• Seamless integration with Amazon Connect, ability to take calls within the remote workspace.
• Ability to scale with ease – Belong now has the capability to introduce remote access to all teams, including Australian-based teams in areas such as software engineering, graphic design, etc.

The entire platform is supported by Mantel Groups’ next generation managed service offering, which maintains the EUC platform and supports end users day-to-day. As part of the Managed Service, Mantel Group also provides ongoing continuous improvement, collaborating with the customer on a backlog of enhancements that ensure the Belong environment is kept in step with cloud best practice.

Belong is considering this becoming the desktop of choice for all of Belong, disconnecting the organisation from specific hardware or device management and enabling all employees to work seamlessly in a virtual environment.