CONGLETON BOROUGH COUNCIL GOES LIVE WITH NEW IP COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

Date: Congleton Borough Council has gone live with a new Voice over IP (VoIP) communications system from NEC Philips Unified Solutions, in a contract valued in the region of £130,000. The solution is a fully converged infrastructure underpinned by a UNIVERGE communications server, with an integrated desktop application for improving call handling and management and a Wide Area Network to support the Council’s operations across the county.

The new VoIP communications system will initially cater for around 400 members of staff and will lead to significant cost savings and enhanced performance and quality of service. It will also enable the Council to deal with higher volumes of incoming calls with greater speed and efficiency.

Congleton Borough Council’s implementation of a new communications system comes as part of a centralisation process, an initiative aimed at rationalising the Council’s disparate offices and providing a foundation for the continued delivery of ‘joined-up’ services. The centralisation initiative brings together the office based staff from the sites in Congleton, Sandbach and Alsager into one new purpose built modern premises at Westfields in Sandbach.

Neil West, Head of IT at Congleton Borough Council, explains, “Improved performance and quality of service were the main drivers in the selection of the new communications system. We wanted to be able to use the same infrastructure for voice and data, whilst still having the assurance that the platform was reliable, resilient and secure. The UNIVERGE server and the infrastructure provided by NEC Philips more than meet these requirements.” 

West continues, “We were keen to invest in a VoIP system to take advantage of the latest technologies. Our old telephone system was outdated and lacked some key functionality. In addition, we needed to rationalise our communication lines out to remote sites and it made economic sense to invest in VoIP. Congleton Borough Council still has a number of remote sites and it supports five leisure centres and it is essential for our phone system and networks to connect up to those sites at high speed with complete ease of operation.”

The Council has already seen benefits in terms of economic savings on its communication lines and has seen its network speed increase significantly. The new user application has also provided the Council with additional functionality, such as providing users with presence information, voicemail, centralised directory and advanced call management, which has enabled it to deal with incoming calls more quickly and effectively.

West says, “All the criteria that was set for the system has been met and overall the project and partnership has been a resounding success. The feedback I have received from employees has been very positive and many have commented on the enhanced speed of the new network.”

Commenting on the project management and implementation of  the NEC Philips solution, Neil West concludes, “The implementation team has been extremely supportive & responsive and have been on hand to offer help and guidance at every stage. We are very impressed with the functionality that the NEC Philips solution can provide, and we look forward to taking further advantage of the benefits of VoIP technology within our organisation.”

NEC Philips Unified Solutions

NEC Philips Unified Solutions (NEC Philips) is a solution provider focused on communications and collaboration, headquartered in Hilversum, Netherlands and with its UK head office in Cambridge.  NEC Philips is a 60:40 joint venture between NEC Corporation of Japan and Royal Philips Electronics.

With an annual turnover in the region of €200 million and 1000 employees, NEC Philips is the European arm of the global NEC communications business which is ranked 2^nd in the worldwide enterprise market (Source: Gartner Dataquest - December 2005). According to Gartner’s report on the Worldwide Enterprise Telephony Equipment market in 2005, NEC is number one in the listing of vendors based on extension lines shipped with a marketshare of 12.6 %.

NEC Philips is a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in Unified Communications (UC) – the convergence of IT and Communications to provide real-time collaboration solutions delivering rich functionality – to small, medium and large enterprises in the private and public sectors.

NEC Philips provides simple to use, yet sophisticated and highly secure UC solutions based around Microsoft software platforms, including Office Communications Server, Exchange, Sharepoint and other UC components.  These are deployed with the latest voice, data and video technologies over converged networks, utilising both desktop and mobile devices to enable real-time, collaborative working.

These real-world solutions provide customers with investment protection by allowing them to deploy technology at their own pace without the need for large-scale replacement of hardware infrastructure. When combined with the latest messaging, presence management and contact centre applications these solutions deliver increased efficiency, quality, profitability and significantly improved customer satisfaction.

NEC Philips provides traditional, hybrid and IP communications products and services to over 12 million end users worldwide.

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