A public art installation in Rhodes, Sydney, part of the City of Canada Bay Council district
Unified communications and cloud provider, Generation-E, has completed a successful implementation of a new cloud-based solution for New South Wales local government organisation, City of Canada Bay Council.
Based in Sydney’s Inner West, The council’s call centre IT system had come to the end of its life cycle. After ten years it was no longer fit for purpose and needed to be retired. The council went to tender with a few specifics in mind as the council’s manager of customer service and IT decision maker, Pauline Webb, told ARN.
“We wanted to have a platform that we knew would have flexibility,” Webb said. “We needed to be able to log caller information to start looking at, and analysing that information to start setting up trends for the community. At the end of the month or quarter, I can go to the board of the business unit and tell them how we are channelling information to the community.”
The Canada Bay City Council also specifically wanted Skype for Business and Enghouse Interactive as its contact centre solution, as Generation-E managing director, Biagio La Rosa, explained.
“In the tender documents, the Canada Bay City Council had specifically requested Enghouse and Skype for Business,” he told ARN. “One of the reasons for this was that a number of other local councils had moved to this system. This also left Generation- E well placed in the tender process, as the company had previously completed a number of these deployments.
Credit: Generation-e “As the largest deployer of Skype for business in the country, probably Enghouse’s largest Skype for Business partner, and having completed numerous local council deployments in NSW and around the country, we were awarded the business.
“The primary driver was to move to Skype for Business and then have a contact centre piece, they [Canada Bay City Council] identified Enghouse as the best contact centre solution for Skype for Business.”
Choosing Skype for Business
The council decided to look exclusively at the two technologies because of the functionality between the two and the resultant cost savings associated with doing away with desk phones in the call centre.
“Skype has a feature now where you are able to see a picture of the person you are talking to. It gives us the opportunity to have no handsets on people’s desks, we are saving $50,000 in handsets as a result,” said Webb.
“Now everyone has a headset. So, no one from the top down has a handset on their desk, it is all on the computer. That then eliminates multiple contact centre numbers and contact lists. Everyone in the organisation has had their photo taken and a description taken of what they do," she said.
