Children's Workforce DC
Implementing integrated
working with Britannic Technologies
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The Children's Workforce
Development Council (CWDC) was founded in 2005 to
improve the lives of children and young people. It does this by
ensuring that people working with children have the best
possible training, qualifications, support and advice. It also
helps children's and young people's organisations and services to
work together so that the child is at the centre of all
services.
"We did an
open tender as we wanted to consider all systems and providers.
Britannic offered the Mitel solution and were able to meet our
expectations in terms of support. Overall they offered the most
cost effective solution with the best end to end support."
Chris Baron,
Head of IT, CWDC
Requirements &
Objectives
In 2006 CWDC implemented a Mega PBX
system based on Asterisk open source software. The MegaPBX was
located in CWDC's Leeds office and served all users, including
those located in London and a number of home workers. CWDC had
deployed SIP handsets from a number of different telephony
providers. Since implementation London users and home workers had
experienced a variety of issues with voice quality. This situation
had been compounded by the fact that the level of support that was
available had been insufficient for CWDC's needs leading to service
interruptions and a poor experience for users.
CWDC were moving to new premises in
Leeds and were looking to implement a replacement telephony system
as soon as was possible in conjunction with the move.
"We were
delighted to be selected to supply the new solution for CWDC.
Throughout the tendering process we invested the time in reviewing
the current environment and the various options available to CWDC.
We were able to identify what we believed to be the best solution
to meet both CWDC's operational needs and support their future
expansion plans and strategic direction. We look forward to
developing our partnership with CWDC to ensure that they get the
most out of the available technology supported with our philosophy
of delivering service excellence."
Jonathan Sharp,
Sales & Marketing Director, Britannic Technologies
The Solution
After a full review of the options
open to CWDC, Britannic Technologies proposed a Mitel IP telephony
platform and a range of applications to enhance staff communication
and management visibility. The new platform makes it very
simple to add new applications as and when they become appropriate
for the business, without having to pay large upgrade costs.
Britannic recommended solution
included the Mitel 3300 resilient controller which will be licensed
for 170 user devices (145 office based and 25 home workers). The
Mitel platform is a true IP Solution connecting the handsets to the
LAN via CWDC's existing 3Com PoE switches, allowing
additional users to be easily added according to CWDC's
continued growth. The system also delivers mobile twinning which enables CWDC to
extend IT support outside of normal hours and increase availability
and mobility of the workforce. Britannic also delivered
a range of applications to help improve staff communication,
development and management visibility. This included Call Recording
and Call Management Software.
"As CWDC
continues to grow, we will be expanding the system to more
local and remote users. We have rolled out
features like Your Assistant to all users to provide
additional functionality and presence information. It also
links in well to the desktop video conferencing
system making it very easy for nontechnical users to
setup and join conferences - being able to see other
people on a call will particularly help our remote
workers feel more connected."
Chris Baron,
Head of IT, CWDC
Benefits
The benefit that the CWDC have
found from their new solution is a much higher voice quality far
exceeding their previous solution. This was found in each location
within regional offices and home workers. This solution has
unified CWDC's entire workforce, regardless of location, offering a
lot more mobility to the users and added benefits to the workers
including full presence and availability of co-workers across the
organisation. Management have benefited from higher visibility
of the workforce through statistical reports and the ability to
review and train staff through the new call recording solution
installed. The video conferencing facilities have been
beneficial in helping unify the workforce and make them feel
more connected to the rest of the team. This has also
resulted in cost savings on travel.
The CWDC have experienced a
high level of support and care, continuity of supply and
exceptional technical knowledge from Britannic Technologies with a
view of establishing a long term partnership.
"We now
have a much more robust telephony platform with proper support
arrangements so we are able to concentrate on matters important to
developing our organisation and services rather than worrying about
whether our telephones will be reliable. Remote workers have
already commented on how much better the Mitel system is both in
terms of reliability and voice quality."
Chris Baron,
Head of IT, CWDC