Holiday giant Lunn Poly is one of a growing number of top-notch firms calling on the services of Harden company ICR Group.

The firm is helping Lunn Poly set up a direct holiday sales call centre in Glasgow along with senior managers from the holiday company.

ICR's managing director Jonathan Smith said: "We provided Lunn Poly with a programme manager experienced in all aspects of call centre operations and other experts to help them meet their challenging timescales."

The company is also involved with a major national telecoms firm and, over the next 12 months, expects to add about 12 people to its full-time staff.

The firm has also created a virtual call centre which can be used for training of potential staff in the growing industry.

Director Andrew Bentley said: "We have produced a CD-Rom which allows people to take a tour of a call centre to see how they operate. We also did a similar exercise for a bank. The bank was thinking of refurbishing its branches and thought the best way to describe the plans to staff was through a CD-Rom showing what the new branches would look like."

ICR makes the most of new technology and the advances made in communication including call centres, digital television, the Internet and interactive television and computers.

Another of its top-level customers is Buckinghamshire firm Nuance which uses ICR's expertise on interactive computers.

Mr Bentley added: "In America they use computers which can hold a conversation with the person who is using it. So, for example, it will talk through the selling of shares by somebody using it to do that."

The firm, which was started in 1996, has 15 full-time staff and calls on the services of about 55 consultants - some of which are world experts in their field.

The Lunn Poly project is one of a number of contracts the firm is involved with including using its information technology team to run the billing system for Deutche Telecom's UK cable company.

The firm is also has a team putting East Midlands Electricity's billing onto an electronic commerce system.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.