NBN Co contracts long-term call centre software

NBN Co has handed a $1.5 million, three-year contract for call centre software to Australian company Veridian as part of a move to fulfil long-term call centre requirements.

Veridian won the tender this month after competing with three other bidders believed to include UXC, IBM and Dimension Data.

An NBN Co spokeswoman said the contract, which will see Veridian implement call switching and management software for the company's Melbourne-based Network Operations Centre, service activations team and public facing call centres.

It would sit on top of NBN Co's existing Cisco-based telephone system but use software from Cisco's rival in the call centre space, Genesys.

It is understood the software aspect was initially part of a tender for an all-purpose, long-term contact centre designed to replace the public-facing centre outsourced to Service Stream in April last year.

Sources told iTnews the initial tender encompassing all aspects of the centre had pinned IBM - also the lead coordinator for NBN Co's sales and operational billing systems - as front-runner for the contract.

However, NBN Co had since removed the software aspect of the tender and reissued it separately.

The software aspect will now cover the Service Stream call centre as well as other aspects of NBN Co's business.

The NBN Co spokeswoman confirmed the tender was separated from the total contact centre requirement "following additional definition of requirements".

Veridian counts other major telcos including iiNet, Amaysim, AAPT and TransACT among its clients.