Attune Hearing

Overview

Attune Hearing, Australia’s largest independent audiology service provider, is using Riverbed’s SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) solution SteelConnect, combined with SteelHead SD, across its 44 clinics nationwide, to enable greater business agility, and the flexibility and visibility it needs to deliver new, dynamic experiences for customers and staff, and remain competitive amidst major industry disruption.

Solution

• SteelConnect EX
• SteelHead

Challenges:

Attune Hearing operates 44 clinics across the country and offers a wide range of audiological services from diagnostic hearing tests for adults and children to hearing aid fitting and rehabilitation. It operates primarily on referrals from healthcare providers. The company has faced increased competition in recent years as the audiology industry undergoes a major disruption, with several large retailers entering the market. Customer experience has become the primary battleground.

“We had been using SteelHead to improve the performance of apps across our network for years, and during that time our IT environment has evolved significantly as we’ve stretched to innovate and deliver richer experiences for our customers and staff,” said Jamie Delacey, Head of ICT, Attune Hearing. “We’re adding new services, applications and locations all time – and it was placing a strain on our existing network. We needed a new, modern approach that would help us continue to optimize the new traffic we were creating, but at the same time, give us greater control and the ability to flex and adapt our network to future needs.”

Solution:

With an IT team of just three, and with 44 clinics spanning vast distances nationwide, bringing new services, apps, and sites online required a significant amount of time, travel and cost for Attune. Getting a single service online could take up to four months.

A cloud networking solution that combines Riverbed SteelConnect for SD-WAN with industry-leading WAN optimization solution Riverbed SteelHead, in a single appliance, will now serve as the foundation for Attune’s digital transformation journey, improving experiences for its customers and staff.

The new solution drastically simplifies networking, reduces the time it takes to spin up new apps, services and locations, and accelerates the slew of new traffic crossing their hybrid environment into the cloud.

Over the next 18 months, Attune has plans to transition to a paperless environment, giving customers an optimal experience with a single digital sign-on and seamless experience, whether they are in-clinic, or the comfort of their home, with cloud-based apps.

“By offering new digital services to customers, we’re also replacing existing cumbersome manual processes for our staff. Not only does this boost productivity and morale, it means our customers are getting the best from our employees,” said Delacey. “The competition is not going away anytime soon, but we’re confident that with Riverbed and Telstra, we have the right technology to deliver the agility we need to continue to lead the nation in audiology.”

Benefits: Riverbed SteelConnect and the Riverbed Application Performance Platform

Riverbed is delivering solutions to help companies transition from legacy hardware to a new software-defined and cloud-centric approach to networking, and improve end user experience, allowing enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives to reach their full potential. Riverbed’s integrated platform delivers the agility, visibility, and performance businesses need to be successful in a cloud and digital world. By leveraging Riverbed’s platform, organizations can deliver apps, data, and services from any public, private, or hybrid cloud across any network to any end-point. Riverbed SteelHead™ is the industry’s #1 optimization solution for accelerated delivery and peak performance of applications across the software-defined WAN. Riverbed SteelConnect™ is a revolutionary application-defined SD-WAN solution that provides an intelligent and simplified approach to designing, deploying and managing distributed networks, and integrates with SteelHead WAN Optimization, SteelCentral for visibility and Riverbed Xirrus cloud based Wi-Fi.

All we need is an internet connection and a new site is up and running on the network. At the same time, the visibility we are getting has been a game-changer. From our head office in Brisbane for example, we are able to understand performance, diagnose and resolve issues and improve service levels for our staff and customers without needing to fly around the country.

Jamie Delacey

Attune Hearing