STUDY: Flying Kiwi Inns builds network success

Thursday January 1 1970

Panasonic Communication Solutions help TV chef Chris Coubrough expand country pub chain with central control

The Flying Kiwi Inns group, owned by Chris Coubrough of the TV series ‘Coastal Kitchen,’ is an independent group of award-winning gastro pubs and luxurious accommodation. The group is composed of the King’s Head, the Crown Inn, the Ship Hotel, the Crown Hotel and the recently opened White Hart Hotel.

Each individually designed site is located in rural and coastal Norfolk. And their restaurants have received various awards, such as the ‘Best East Anglia Gastro Pub 2012’ from the Good Pub Guide, the Gold Award for Serviced accommodation by enjoyengland.com and the Cask Marque Certificate of Excellence in Serving Cask Ales.

Coubrough can certainly take a large portion of the credit for the success of the group, as the customer-centric nature of the premises was initiated by his desire to “create places to stay and eat that I would like and that people would want to go to again and again.” Yet despite the group’s current success, he recognises that there is still a long way to go.

Networking its way to success

In order to continue to expand the group and come closer to achieving his dream, Coubrough identified the need for an interconnected network to centralise admin and bookings. This will allow the staff in each location to concentrate on serving customers. The network will also enable communication between the geographically dispersed premises within the group and assist the business to run at its optimum efficiency.

Although Coubrough knew what he wanted to achieve, he was unsure how to achieve it. He turned to Russell Marriott, managing director of Eastern Voice & Data. “Achieving the connectivity and streamlining between sites that Chris was asking for was a real challenge,” said Marriott. “The most practical way to connect the sites together is by the use of broadband, but as we all know, Norfolk is not blessed with the best broadband particularly when you want to use it for voice traffic. Chris’ restaurants are in very beautiful and remote locations, which add to the difficulties. But we were delighted to be set the challenge and were determined to show that Norfolk based skills and knowledge could provide a workable solution.”

Once accepting the challenge, Eastern Voice & Data consulted with Hunstanton-based broadband and line provider, Swains. Between them a broadband network was designed that enabled the establishments to be connected with high quality links. Marriott commented: “We had to find reliable products that would give a high quality experience; with Swain’s expert assistance we’ve achieved exactly that. We connected to the latest IP [internet protocol] telephone systems we provided at each location to give a true VoIP [voice-over IP] network. What we’ve managed to achieve is speech quality on the network that is indistinguishable from the landline quality.”

Making use of existing equipment

In addition to the quality of the network, another important aspect of the project was minimising cost. This was achieved using the Panasonic Communication Solutions equipment already owned by the Inns in new ways, only purchasing new equipment when necessary. As a result Coubrough received a high quality network for a reduced cost. At ‘The Kiwi Nest’ for example, which receives all of the call traffic, it was necessary to introduce two new converged IP-PBX telephone systems: a KX-NCP1000 operating with Gamma Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunks and a KX-TVM50 for unified messaging.

The KX-NCP1000 OneNet facilitates more effective methods of communication with both employees and customers and allows anytime-anywhere access to business communication applications via a range of wired and wireless devices. The appliance, which offers voicemail, digital and IP telephone support, digital and IP network trunks and applications, can manage up to 100 users.

The KX-TVM50 integrated voice processing system is used by ‘The Kiwi Inns’ in combination with the KX-NCP1000. It offers advanced voice messaging features; including an advanced automated attendant service, interview service and holiday service and it offers a voicemail menu display on system phones, caller name announcement and caller ID/clip-based greetings. The feature set also includes multi-lingual voice prompts, automatic fax detection and fax routing, call screening and call recording. Individual extensions can set up their own menu options for callers to follow, and get callers to leave a message or go on to a different extension, potentially a mobile phone, if the caller is unavailable or out of office.

Communicating across the business

Combined with the KX-NCP1000, the KX-TVM50 also offers enhanced features such as two-way recording, live call screening, call ID intelligence and remote access. The combination of these two telephone systems has helped improve the efficiency of The Kiwi Inns, whether dealing with sales, customer service, marketing or human resources. These are combined with KX-DT346 and KX-DT343 handsets.

The newest site, White Hart at Hingham, is using the KX-NCP500 – the model below the KX-NCP1000, which offers all the same capabilities, but is built for up to 64 users. All other sites are legacy KX-TDA15 and KX-TDA30, on which a gateway card system was installed by Eastern Voice & Data to enable connectivity through the wide area network (WAN). This enabled Coubrough to maximise the return on its Panasonic hardware investment to date, as existing technology was linked into the network.

The network, facilitated by all of these products, has allowed Coubrough’s business to maximise bookings, share resources and streamline administration enabling decisions to be made more quickly. “What this network has meant is that serving staff can get on with doing the job they are employed to do giving guests their full attention, which is how it should be,” he said. “This was what I wanted to be the end result.”

There has also been an interesting side effect: “Because the calls between the sites are free we encourage the staff to discuss improvements and experiences,” Coubrough added. “The ability to communicate gives a real team spirit so that, although we’re operating in different buildings, we’re all pulling together.”

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