The Customer
Orkney Islands Council – is Britain’s smallest local authority. Set up in 1975, the Council was one of the 3 original all-purpose authorities in Scotland and became a model for the delivery of local government across the nation – a model used in the creation of 29 similar single-tier authorities in 1996. The council is also the harbour authority for Orkney and its marine services division manages the operation of the islands’ 29 piers and harbours
The Challenge
Orkney Islands Council had a requirement for an innovative and advanced telephony solution that streamlined council services and provided enhanced services for more than 22,000 residents – and a future-proof communication system infrastructure for its 750 office-based employees.
Implementation
Exchange Communications delivered an Avaya IP Office Edition Server Select including fully managed service, with full unified communications functionality including soft client, mobile applications and desk phones, giving full functionality and flexibility to those working across the network, whether they are working from their office base, from home or any other connected location on the islands.
Key Results / Benefits
Exchange Communications successfully implemented the Avaya solution. This has allowed Orkney Islands Council to operate seamlessly across all sites.
Additional benefits for Orkney Council from the new system are:
- Improved technology – by creating a telephone enterprise solution with a single point of administration.
- Increased efficiency by meeting the company’s communication needs on a single system and reduced training/support requirements through the uniform deployment of enterprise-wide features and dial plan.
- Transforms the way Orkney Islands Council… conduct business by offering a seamless engagement experience for both customers and employees. Regardless of their locations, devices, or applications, users have telephony, messaging, conferencing, contact centre, video and unified communications.
- Redefined availability and security delivered through business communications applications on secure platforms that are as reliable and secure as traditional voice. High availability and security are about facilitating distributed IP technology to meet traditional voice expectations.
- Resilience capabilities, such as automatic fail-over, has helped prevent service disruption by enabling any site to function as a stand-alone system until network services are restored.
- Centralised Web-based management simplifies the administration process, and centralized licensing makes it easy for system administrators to assign user solutions to staff members anywhere within the network.