Daisy delivers a full package of support but also works with us to look at new technologies as and when they become available. Our relationship with the team is very good; they understand our objectives and we know that we can rely on them for support, day or night.
Lee McSparron, Head of ICT at Pembrokeshire County Council
The Background
Pembrokeshire County Council is the local authority for Pembrokeshire in Wales, providing a wide range of services for residents, businesses and visitors. The council has around 150 offices, including five core sites, dispersed throughout the county.
The Challenge
The council had a mixture of legacy Mitel equipment which was coming to the end of its life. The organisation also had multiple office moves and site relocations in the pipeline. In addition, the contact centre and the core business users were moving to a model which required the use of IP telephony for hot-desking and connectivity.
The ICT team was aware that the infrastructure within the council would benefit from a fully integrated IP solution using IP handsets. The area has a very good wide area network (WAN) which provided the opportunity to remove legacy PABXs from the council’s remote sites, ensuring it could move to a consolidated approach with all remote sites coming off core switches.
Following a formal tender, Daisy was successful against numerous applications and was appointed to assist the council in developing its overall telephony strategy.
The Solution
Daisy worked closely with Pembrokeshire County Council to review the estate to see how much legacy equipment there was and what needed to be upgraded.
The Daisy team of sales, engineers, pre-sales and project managers held a number of meetings with the council’s ICT team and Head of IT to assess the organisation’s requirements and to put plans in place for any potential impact of the intended upgrade.
Following this consultation, Daisy upgraded the council’s Mitel estate. The legacy Mitel sx2000 equipment was upgraded to three Mitel MXe 3300 servers and IP handsets. The council is now also running Mitel MiCollab (formerly Mitel UCA) and audio web conferencing on VMWare with Active Directory Integration.
The Result
One of the main benefits of the Mitel upgrade is the improved functionality and efficiency it gives the council across its entire footprint.
Lee McSparron, Head of ICT at Pembrokeshire County Council, said: “The 3G is notoriously poor here so we’ve built Wi-Fi hotspots around the county to enable staff to hop onto the corporate wireless network and access facilities when they are on the move. Enabling employees to use the Mitel UC Client means they can log in and collaborate with other employees while they are away from a main office. The savings on mileage and increased productivity are very significant.”
The second key benefit the council is realising is an improved level of customer service. Lee said: “The Mitel solution is fully integrated into our main contact centre so our Contact Centre Manager now gets the reporting statistics she needs to be able to make improvements to call response times and resource planning.”
In addition, the team at Pembrokeshire know they can rely on Daisy’s service. Lee said: “Daisy delivers a full package of support but also works with us to look at new technologies as and when they become available. Our relationship with the team is very good; they understand our objectives and we know that we can rely on them for support, day or night.”
The Future
Pembrokeshire County Council views Daisy as a long-term trusted advisor and as such is working with them to explore new technologies that will help it achieve its objectives.
Daisy is currently working on a Proof of Concept around business continuity utilising SIP technology. Lee said: “We’re working with Daisy and our calls provider to explore a solution that will provide us with business continuity if the telephone exchange goes down. This will ensure we have the facility in place to port numbers elsewhere utilising the WAN.”
The council is also looking into technology to support Channel Shift – moving customer contacts and transactions from more expensive options (telephone, face to face contact, letter) to less expensive options (for example self-service on the web and live chat).
Lee said: “We want to exploit the technologies available to us and the Mitel solution is already enabling us to do just that. It’s great for council productivity and I look forward to working with the Daisy team as they bring more ideas to the table to help us further achieve our objectives.”
