The Bay of Plenty Regional Council (BOPRC) is a local government authority in New Zealand. One of their responsibilities is to monitor weather events and river levels in their region and warn farmers and landowners with low lying land adjacent to the seven major rivers in the Bay of Plenty if there is potential flooding in their area.

Before TNZ, BOPRC managed flood warning calls manually. Flood Warning staff maintained a list of farmer's contacts in separate localised warning groups. If a predetermined river level was exceeded triggering an automated alarm staff started calling farmers using a phone tree system. If the first person on the list was contacted, they then in turn contacted the rest of the people on that particular list. If that person couldn't be contacted then staff had to work their way down the list until someone answered the phone and received the flood warning. That person would then start calling the rest of the people on their list. This was a time-consuming process.

Automating the warnings wasn't easy - email didn't solve the issue, as farmers were busy tending to their livestock, not at their computer checking emails.

SMS messaging fit the 'urgency' criteria; however, many at-risk farms are far outside mobile coverage and SMS messages couldn't send. These rural farmers relied on landline telephones to communicate.

Voice calling the farmers was the best option; when the phone rings it's urgent and gets answered, answered calls are measurable and trackable, and any device could be called - both landlines and mobiles. The only trouble was time!

TNZ's Automated VoiceCast system filled the void. If an adverse weather event was on-the-way, a staff member could log into TNZ's online dashboard from their laptop or mobile, select the list of farmers likely to be affected by the weather, choose from a list of pre-loaded voice warning templates, and send the urgent warning message. Each farmer receives the call almost instantly and simultaneously - no manual calling and no delays!