Guildford Borough Council
Logicalis delivers IP telephony and applications to drive development of Government services
The Client
Guildford Borough Council operates 19 service units, providing around 140 different services to a population of 130,000 and a thriving business community, including world-class companies such as Palmolive-Colgate, Standard Life Healthcare, Legal & General and Cornhill Insurance. Guildford also houses one of the UK's largest science and technology parks, the Surrey Research Park, which, with over 2,750 employees, makes a significant contribution to the local economy.
Typical of many local government organisations, the Council is undergoing significant change with the modernisation of their IT infrastructure and the subsequent deployment of e-government services.
The Challenge
Following an in depth review of existing IT architecture and applications, Guildford Borough Council identified the requirement to upgrade and standardise their telephony infrastructure.
A recent survey emphasised the telephone as the primary means of conducting business with the Council, which currently averages over 150,000 calls per month. However, a history of disparate voice networks meant limited functionality and capacity – any increase in calls would render the network unsuitable.
Steve Wragge-Morley, Head of ICT Services, of Guildford Borough Council, explains; "Voice is the key application. Being able to speak to someone in order to resolve a problem or query is often the easiest solution, and therefore, we needed a telephony system that would support the community's needs.
"On top of this, the review highlighted discrepancies between each Council department's voice system. Consolidating this key application onto one network would enable Council employees to work more intelligently, share critical information, and allow us to gain control."
Identifying the commercial and technical benefits of a converged voice and data network, Guildford Borough Council put out a tender specifying the replacement of its PBX with an enterprise-wide IP PBX. As part of this a number of objectives were specified, including:
- The consolidation of telephony systems across the Council, including call centre operations and Spectrum, the UK's largest Council-owned leisure centre.
- Deployment and integration of feature-rich applications, such as intelligent call routing
- Agility to deploy temporary call centres in the event of emergency – Civil Contingencies Act (2005)
- Ease of use to ensure high end-user adoption of new applications and services
The Solution
Working to the initial tender, Logicalis approached the Council with a proposal based upon the migration to a converged network, and applications specific to Guildford's service proposition.
Wragge-Morley, explains; "Logicalis demonstrated a detailed understanding of our business requirements. Their expertise in IP convergence went beyond our expectations and it was clear from the outset that Logicalis would provide us with a robust and scalable IT infrastructure."
Working from an open-book approach, Logicalis and Guildford designed a best-of-breed solution based primarily on Mitel IP telephony. In doing so, Guildford would benefit from a feature rich and resilient platform whilst supporting the financial investment and training with a Cisco data infrastructure.
Adopting a multi-phase implementation that would support the pre-existing telephony service and ensure seamless voice services throughout the migration, Logicalis split the installation between Guildford Borough Council's headquarters and Spectrum leisure centre. This would provide valuable fail-over services, allow the network to scale on-demand, and comply with the Council's disaster recovery programme.
Intrinsic to the successful rollout of the network was Guildford's involvement. Steve Wragge-Morley explains, "Working alongside Logicalis was an education in itself. We had the opportunity to meet with vendor partners and gain inside knowledge, as well as understand every aspect of our newly migrated network. This was invaluable training for our ICT team, and opened our eyes to just how valuable the network could become."
The Outcome
The partnership enjoyed by Logicalis and Guildford Borough Council was pivotal to the successful deployment, and subsequent adoption, of the newly converged network.
Throughout every stage of the implementation members of the Council's ICT team were present, and a great emphasis placed upon end-user training to ensure seamless adoption. Since the rollout, Guildford Borough Council has exploited a variety of features designed to achieve seamless integration of services across the Borough.
"There are benefits we can immediately appreciate, such as a reduction in physical infrastructure and the maintenance of it, which has a significant financial bearing. However, it's the ‘touchy-feely' applications from which the Council and community will benefit from. From having a direct dial telephone number, transferring calls to their mobiles, and receiving voicemails through Outlook, employees will be more focused, and the Council is working as a team.
As a result, we've already witnessed an improvement in our response times, and are now able to analyse who and how employees respond to public enquiries. This means we can tailor staff training and continually improve customer service."
The Future
"The future of our network is only as great as our imagination," says Steve Wragge-Morley. "There is so much unforeseen potential, and convergence is still a relatively new phenomena and offers longevity."
