Cambridgeshire County Council is transforming its working environment by providing its employees with fast, simple, ‘always on’, access communications to improve the delivery of services to a population of over 560,000. Using a Unified Communications solution from Avaya (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of business communication applications, systems and services, the Council is building a converged IP (Internet Protocol) network in a three year phased project.
Cambridgeshire County Council’s new converged IP network, was designed, installed and is now being managed by Central Telecom, an Avaya Platinum BusinessPartner. The solution has allowed the Council to achieve a true business transformation, helping meet its objective to develop an empowered and responsive workforce, whilst delivering more than £1.2m savings over a two year period.
“Thanks to Avaya’s technology and Central Telecom’s system integration expertise, the new network is allowing us to execute our “WorkWise” programme, an initiative specifically designed to reduce operating costs and improve council efficiency” said Mike Parsons, Deputy Chief Executive, of Cambridgeshire County Council. “Upon project completion the Council will benefit from a truly unified communications solutions, providing over 5,000 government employees with a platform to effectively communicate, share and interact together from anywhere at anytime, enabling new forms of flexible working and significantly improving the quality of public services offered ” concluded Mike.
The deployment based on Avaya’s Communication Manager IP Telephony software, created an excellent converged network, allowing employees to ‘hot desk’, working from different locations, saving the Council money by reducing unproductive office space. The new converged network was also a key ‘building block’ to creating a unified communications solution, with new applications designed to drive productivity by increasing collaboration amongst the Council’s staff. By using Avaya’s Modular Messaging application employees can now answer voice messages and email from one Microsoft Exchange inbox.
“It’s a fast moving world where people need to respond quickly to meet their customers needs – in the government sector citizens are expecting higher quality of services” said Jonathan Buckle, Head of Public Sector, Avaya UK “Central Telecom, by deploying the right unified communications applications enabled by Avaya’s IP Telephony, has shown how local government can improve business agility, creating a virtual workplace with fewer employees needing to work in ‘headquarters’. Local Government organizations are not just speeding up service delivery but are also changing the way they work to make services more cost effective and more accessible” concluded Buckle.
The new Cambridgeshire County Council communication system also includes Avaya’s Meeting Exchange a true collaboration application which provides web conferencing capabilities that go beyond audio conferencing. In future Council staff will share documents, presentations and desktop views and even edit materials, in real time over the Internet. In addition to the current Avaya one-X IP Phones, the Council will be rolling out Avaya’s software based telephone the ‘one-X Portal’ – another fundamental productivity booster that will allow staff to place and receive phone calls from any desktop or laptop PC with Internet access, making it an ideal application for employees on the move or working remotely.
Andrew Shaw, Head of Central Public Sector commented “It has been a very exciting 12 months for the Central Public Sector Team. We have enjoyed significant success with a number of Local Authorities who are investing in technology as a means to reduce office estate and transform public services. The Public Sector in general is under enormous pressure to provide better services to their local communities and to offer flexible working opportunities for employees. At Central we are in a unique position in being able to provide the technology from infrastructure right through to applications. As an Avaya Platinum BusinessPartner we have been able to bring all the skills and experience needed to deliver very successful projects in an extremely demanding sector.”
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