Pirelli drives IT Support Communication to a single point with BT SmartNumbers

London, England. March 2005

Pirelli is a world leader and innovator in the key markets of tyres, energy and telecom cabling. The company's UK IT support team, based at Pirelli UK Tyres headquarters in Burton-on-Trent, serves this office, two Pirelli tyre manufacturing sites and 65 Central Tyre retail tyre depots across the UK.

To provide after-hours support, the IT support team's communication system relied on passing around mobile phones to the relevant IT specialist on duty that week. This was impractical and inflexible. Pirelli wanted to offer a more efficient IT support service and make it easier for employees to reach the correct after-hours support technician.

Pirelli discussed these challenges with BT and chose to implement the BT SmartNumbers solution, in order to streamline after-hours IT support and improve communication. Julian Courtney, BT Account Manager said “The BT SmartNumbers solution is designed with flexible working in mind. A single telephone number connects individuals, wherever they are, with integrated voicemail and call-delegation. This solution is well suited to the IT support team at Pirelli, as they are often working off-site, but need to be contactable at all times.”

The BT SmartNumbers system at Pirelli combines Flexible Working and Virtual Contact Centre functionality to offer a single telephone number to connect to the technicians that are on duty that week, wherever he is located. BT SmartNumbers is a network-based solution, and services such as systems management, provisioning, billing and helpdesk are all included as part of the package. This provides lower cost of ownership, no capital expense and simplified deployment; a solution from a single user to several thousand if required; and a low-cost convenient 'try before you buy' option.

“BT SmartNumbers has proved a success in the IT department,” said Martin Redman, Technical Support Analyst at Pirelli. “After-hours support has been made much easier and the technicians can travel around without having to call into the office anymore. The service has relieved the hassle involved in passing around mobile phones and diverting the office landline. Employees feel more confident that they will get through to the right duty technician and their IT problems will be resolved swiftly.”

Following the successful deployment of BT SmartNumbers in the after-hours IT support team, Pirelli plans further rollout across the UK IT function, and is also considering extending this to other divisions. “With the increase in flexible and mobile working, having one number to contact people on makes business sense,” says Martin Redman. “For example, there are lots of project managers at Pirelli Cables and they are often out and about in the field. Instead of using desk phones and mobile phones, BT SmartNumbers would mean that people could be reached on one number, and they wouldn't have to come into the office to divert phones from their desk.”

“We're pleased to to offering this service to Pirelli”, said Geoffrey Paterson, CEO of SmartNumbers. “Having proven the capability of our flexible-working and virtual contact-centre services within their IT division, we look forward to working closely with Pirelli as they expand these sort of services across the group.”

About Pirelli

Pirelli is a global producer of tires, energy and telecommunications cables and systems. With more than 36,000 employees, 77 production sites and total sales of more than €6.6Bn on December 31, 2003, Pirelli is one of the world's leading companies. It focuses its R&D, production resources and competencies on leading-edge technologies, as demonstrated by the advanced Pirelli Labs in the photonics and new materials fields and by MIRS — the Modular Integrated Robotized System for tire production. Additional information on Pirelli is available at www.pirelli.com.