Case Studies - Halarose

Halarose is a leading specialist software developer producing applications for local government.  They approached Teledesign in 2006 for assistance in the development of a new multimedia response service for voter registration.  Halarose wanted to provide local authorities – their clients – with a flexible way of allowing local residents to register their household details for elections.

Rather than fill in yet another form, households would be able to confirm or amend details of people living at the address via an automated telephone system, the internet, or even using their mobile phone.

Approach and methodology

Teledesign worked alongside the Halarose team to create a new intelligent database coupled with Teleserver’s IVRX and SMSX protocols. The system had the capacity to cache voice prompts automatically resulting in a much smoother user experience - and a much lower impact on resources. This was hosted on a dedicated voice server which worked alongside a customised web server providing the SMS functionality.

After an initial period spent defining and interpreting the project requirements and completing the design, the implementation was completed in just three weeks - in good time for the start of the annual electoral canvass

Outcome

“It was an ambitious project” explained William Quinton, Managing Director of Halarose. “We needed a company who really understood the telephony side as well as the internet. Teledesign struck us as being very well informed and very confident about their abilities to deliver. They were also far more flexible in their approach than anybody else we spoke to. This was particularly important as we wanted to develop an open platform architecture for our new product.

“We now have seven local authorities using the new service and over 600,000 registered users. The system has proved to be very resilient and handled several thousand registrations on our busiest day. Telephone registration can now be completed in under two minutes and the telephony system can cope with several different languages as well as English.

SMS registration - which nobody has ever done before - is demonstrating its success, particularly with younger voters who otherwise tend to be less diligent at completing their registration. Best of all, the project was completed on time, and on budget.”