A mixed set of aging communication systems and various platforms, made some sites difficult to manage for non-profit organisation, CatholicCare, within its Canberra and Goulburn district.
The organisation operates about 10 remote sites in the area and the mix of communications systems often meant staff were required to work with multiple extension numbers and voicemail boxes.
Its aging legacy equipment had been costly to repair and to top this off, faults and repairs often went unresolved, reducing both efficiency and productivity.
Canberra-based VoIP specialist, Sedcom, took on the task of redesigning the communications system for the organisation, deploying Panasonic communications technology (KX-NSX1000), to replace the decentralised legacy system.
"Our key requirements were to provide savings through reducing the number of active services we had across all locations, whilst updating and replacing the various ageing equipment we had installed over the years,” CatholicCare Canberra and Goulburn senior operations manager Jeremy Grainger said.
“Several systems were no longer supported and this was at considerable risk to the business services and operations.
“We needed a system that was easy to use and uniform across all staff and sites in its operation. With staff frequently required to work from various locations, it was a logistical challenge with the previous equipment.”
The project took one month including configuration of the new systems, data migration and thorough testing.
The new systems were installed at four sites, with terminals installed in parallel to minimise customer downtime. A VoIP service was provisioned to test call quality and call handling across sites.
Undertaking this project has produced cost savings of up to $400 per month for CatholicCare and has allowed employees to work across multiple locations.
On top of this, CatholicCare Canberra and Goulburn, benefited from a simplified system maintenance and management, with room to further expand.
Sedcom head of unified communications (UC) and corporate projects Luke Young said being able to configure and expand their new communications systems was major point for CatholicCare, especially as they continue to add further remote sites.
With the new system in place, CatholicCare was able to consolidate their network services with centralised SIP trunk channels consolidating the ISDN PRI service at Red Hill, resulting in savings of about $425 per month and it also achieved up to 50 per cent reduction in call charges with SIP trunking.
Planned upgrading and consolidation of other sites will also take costs further down.
“We’ve been dealing with CatholicCare for a while and had an opportunity to clean up decades worth of equipment they had accrued over time with other systems from other organisations and we made into one cohesive system,” Young said.
“The Panasonic solution was able to deliver on that and provide a consistent user experience across the whole organisation.”
Young said they previously had different PABXs from different vendors and had to manage multiple extensions, numbers and voicemail boxes and created the problem of people trying to call in and where the voicemail was left, and so on.
“The Panasonic solution allowed us to use technology that was appropriate for their area.
"An example was a small site that didn’t have cabling that could support VoIP phones, and because of the way the network was designed, we were able to put equipment on site that would suit the old communications cabling and still have the site operate in the same way as others."
