Australia Post has concluded a major network upgrade involving improving internet connectivity across around 4000 post offices, deliveries facilities and support offices Australia-wide. The two-year network upgrade, which included the deployment of a new data network connecting the offices as well as enhanced Wi-Fi connectivity, is now complete. At its peak, the wholesale Transformation program migrated approximately 100 Post Offices within five business days, AusPost said.
The CIO of the Australia Post stated that the upgrade also included the deployment of a collaboration platform to support working from home for those employees able to during the pandemic, as well as the standardisation of the organisation’s 20,000 mobile devices onto a single management platform. It was noted that 20,000 mobile devices used by support team members, including mobile phones, laptops and tablets, have been brought together onto one customer-centric platform, greatly enhancing device security and management. The single platform has also given contact centre staff and business units a single pane view across the workforce.
By transitioning all of its post offices and facilities to a new, highly resilient and scalable data network, equipping them with Wi-Fi capability and improving internet bandwidth, Australia Post is now able to deliver a significantly higher service level at every one of our sites, the CIO said. Customers expect more information in real-time and transparency through the supply chain and we are making sure we have the telecommunication infrastructure to deliver for them.
Australia Post will now be able to scale up internet bandwidth when and where they need to, accelerate the onboarding of new services to days rather than weeks and enable new capabilities such as mobile point of sale, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions.
Another article notes that as a result of the network upgrade, AusPost can “now identify and mitigate 80 per cent of issues”. From this, AusPost has been able to reduce business impacting outages by over 70%. The enhanced service availability also means the organisation can switch its focus from reactive support to being proactive in preventing issues.
A core element of the wider Transformation program was the upgrade and standardisation of AusPost’s communications and collaboration systems, supported by an Australian telecommunications company and an American multinational technology conglomerate corporation – a phase of the upgrade which benefited substantially from Covid lockdowns, enabling tech teams to work without regular staff in-office.
Based on the US tech firm’s videoconference platform, Webex, the enterprise-wide collaboration and conferencing platform were rolled out in three business days, enabling “remote working for thousands of office-based Australia Post team members”.
The communications systems upgrade – in place now for more than a year – has resulted in a 40% improvement in collaboration, according to AusPost’s Head of Technology for Network and Infrastructure Engineering. It has also resulted in a 10% boost in engagement scores across the group the Head said. AusPost has also finalised its upgrade and standardisation of its six contact centre operations, consolidated onto one platform and supported by conversational AI platform, LivePerson.
