By Mark Samuels, diginomica
The Boston Red Sox baseball team is using unified communications to help employees connect and to provide a platform for future innovations in customer experience.
The Red Sox, who are one of the most successful Major League Baseball (MLB) teams and the current World Series Champions, were looking for a modern replacement for an aging communications system that was costly to maintain. After assessing alternative systems, the team chose Mitel’s multi-site unified communications technology.
The system bring benefits both on and off the field of play, says Brian Shield, vice president of information technology for the Red Sox, who spoke with diginomica around the recent MLB London Series, where the team played two games against arch rivals New York Yankees at the London Stadium, home of West Ham United Football Club:
“We use Mitel technology within baseball as a communications vehicle between our club houses and our bullpens, where the players warm up. It brings us reliability – it enables communication on the field as the game is played. It also works with everything that we do as an organisation. What we’re really excited about with Mitel is that, as they continue to exploit their technology platforms, we see a tremendous number of opportunities for using their system as the communications glue that really ties together so many of our initiatives.”
When it comes to game day, Mitel provides a unified communications system for all 30 MLB clubs. The standardised system is based on the MiVoice Business platform and 6920 IP phones. The system, which was also implemented in the London Stadium for the recent MLB games, connects umpires and the Replay Review Center in New York City.