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Australian Venue Company

How we support meteoric growth

For over 16 years we’ve supported Australian Venue Company (AVC), an Australian hospitality powerhouse that has grown exponentially during that time. We’ve been a trusted partner to AVC since the beginning – from the early days providing an on-premises Samsung PBX solution for 16 venues through to today with our cloud-based Mitel system and an omni channel Contact Centre supporting almost 200 venues Australia wide.
We sat down with AVC’s CIO, Barry Maitland, to talk about how and why we’re one of AVC’s longest standing partners.

Who is Australian Venue Company?

AVC own and operate over 180 hospitality venues, pubs and bars across Australia and New Zealand. Their hallmark, and mission, is to create unique identities for each one of their venues – keeping the feel local, intimate and fresh – while leveraging their scale to capitalise on opportunities and deliver excellence. By using buyer and supplier power at an enterprise level, each venue gets the very best food and beverage quality and price.
Industry

Hospitality

Location

Melbourne HQ + venues all over Australia

Employees

5,000+

Business

180+ venues, pubs and bars

Over the years, AVC has grown rapidly. As part of this growth, they’ve centralised much of their architecture to make them a very big business running lots of small ones – the best of both worlds. As the business has changed, new challenges have created options to do things differently, which enabled the rapid expansion they are known for.
AVC is an industry leader in innovation and technology, supercharging their pubs and utilising tech to make better business decisions. Their mission is to bring the beloved Aussie pub into the future.

So, where do we fit in? We’ve provided a strong connected communications foundation to aid AVC’s growth each step of the way.

“It’s been a really positive relationship; I think even from the start we were on similar trajectories. It certainly helps when we’re both growing up at the same time.” – Barry Maitland, CIO

The challenge of scale

As AVC has rapidly expanded, so has the complexity of running over 180 small businesses as part of one enterprise. Managing the enquiry and booking process for so many venues, continually adding and opening new venues, and navigating the global pandemic have all challenged the business.
Our Mitel system and omni channel Contact Centre with integrations to facebook, chat, and workforce management have been powerful in keeping the business operating smoothly.
AVC is constantly evolving, and as new venues are added, (recently 8 new venues were opened in 2 months) the Contact Centre has to keep up. By talking directly the operational users across the whole enterprise and engaging at a deep level, eComms stays reactive to issues, can troubleshoot quickly and ensure ongoing support and service.

The 2020 pivot to remote work – a CIO’s reflection

According to Barry Maitland, AVC’s CIO, the move from the physical Contact Centre in Melbourne HQ to staff working remotely was “a really big win”. When the first lockdown hit in Melbourne, AVC needed to immediately transition all Contact Centre staff to home. We were able to support 30 staff, who ordinarily sat at their desks in the Contact Centre with a phone, to quickly get set up to work from home with their same phone, working across their home internet.

Why the eComms + AVC partnership works

How we support AVC

  • Centralized Mitel phone system delivering end points to all venues and administration in the Melbourne based HQ
  • Mitel Contact Centre solution for centralised call answering of booking and enquiry
During our partnership, we’ve been a consistent, open and dedicated supporter of AVC – a complex business in rapid growth. At the heart of this partnership is trust and respect, the reason why a 16-year relationship continues to deliver great results for both partners.

Timeline

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Barry Maitland CIO

“It's been a really positive relationship; I think even from the start we were on similar trajectories. It certainly helps when we're both growing up at the same time.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO

Barry Maitland CIO

“We've got 30 people in the Contact Centre and there's times where they're taking up to 2000 calls a day. So being able to enable the business in that way is really important. But the most important thing is the simplicity of the Mitel system for us. I can literally buy a pub and go and put phones in it and as long as I've got an internet connection, we're all good.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO

Barry Maitland CIO

“We've got the system to the point where the robustness is pretty solid. We don't have much in the way of outage and when we do obviously there's support there 24/7 if we need it.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO

Barry Maitland CIO

“That was massive, it was exceptional for us. The ability to pivot to remote work so easily was best of breed, absolutely.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO

Barry Maitland CIO

“As a large business, what I look for is someone that is big enough to be able to support us but small enough that we’re important to them.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO

Barry Maitland CIO

"eComms don’t deliver cookie cutter solutions. Their customers are well taken care of but in an individual way. I think that's a real strength of theirs – to properly look after them and not sort of one size fits all for everybody.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO

Barry Maitland CIO

“Having that open sort of transparency, to be frank – it's a sweet spot.”
– Barry Maitland, CIO