With over 100 events to organise in 36 different countries in 2007, the European Tour travels worldwide looking after all aspects of professional golf and running tournaments nearly every week of the year.
Due to the amount of organisation and preparation involved in each event, the European Tour demands a great deal from its telecommunications solution both at its headquarters at Wentworth and on the road. It therefore recognised a need to update its telecommunications platform as well as provide its mobile team with a portable communications solution in order to stay one step ahead.
Mark Lichtenhein, chief information officer at the European Tour said: “Basically we want to take our own telephone and communications system on tour. It is important for our staff to have seamless access to the same technology, ideally using the same telephone numbers, to improve call efficiencies and streamline communications. It has been a challenge for us relying on temporary lines and, while we realise we can’t change this all at once, with IP communications implemented at Wentworth we are finally in a position to start thinking about how we can have permanent lines on tour.”
In the first stage of its telecommunications overhaul, the European Tour installed the 3300 ICP at Wentworth to improve communications and provide IP capabilities, as recommended by communications reseller Universal. The European Tour also deployed Mitel Teleworker to create a more efficient and mobile workforce and to help it put its ambitious plans in place to eventually have its own telecommunications lines at each event. With the solution deployed at Wentworth the European Tour could then plan a staged implementation to extend its communications strategy to tournaments across the world.
Lichtenhein added: “Mitel’s Teleworker solution enables our employees to work from any location while having access to their desktop as though they were in the main office. The Mitel 3300 platform allows us to add applications as and when we wish, with the ability to build on a platform which is very flexible and scalable.”
And with IP on board, the European Tour has a great vision for the future. Lichtenhein concludes: “With our new IP solution from Mitel we have already made significant progress and are excited about the opportunities to implement a standard infrastructure which we can take with us and plug in wherever we are.
“Managing our communications internally at a tournament makes a huge difference. Moving forward, we have great vision for the future to extend this into many more of our tournaments.”