Allerdale Borough Council, which serves a population of 93,493 citizens, has been looking at ways of generating greater organisational efficiencies with IT but without compromising on the services delivered to its citizens. The council’s vision is for Allerdale to be “A great place to live, work and visit”. This is supported by seven key areas focusing on regeneration at the heart. These include, Jobs for Local People, Image and Environment, Rural Renewal, Feeling Safer, Transport, Young People and Housing.
The requirement to replace the existing BT FeatureNet telephony function at the council, and the timely upgrade of the local and wide area network infrastructure, provided the opportunity for Stephen Kirkpatrick, Allerdale’s IT Services Manager, and his team to evaluate a new communications platform. Looking to enhance the availability of council services, the integration of a contact centre was a key component of the selection criteria.
Stephen Kirkpatrick, IT Services Manager, Allerdale Borough Council commented “Following a European procurement exercise for the supply and implementation of a state of the art IP Telephony solution to support the ongoing needs and development of each council, the Cisco IP solution, proposed by Lynx Technology, was identified as being the solution for our current and future needs.
We are very happy to have achieved the switch over from FeatureNet on-time and with minimal disruption to our customers and users. We are now working towards opening a new Allerdale Contact Centre, utilising the Cisco call centre technologies, over the coming months.
We have been extremely pleased with the professional service provided by Lynx Technology and are looking forward to further developing a successful partnership over the coming years”.
Cisco Gold Partner, Lynx Technology was short listed to supply, install and support the IP Telephony solution for 450 users across the Allerdale Council. This solution incorporates Cisco Call Manager with Survivable Remote Site Telephony, Cisco IP Contact Centre Express, Tiger Call Management and Witness Call Recording.
These services have been packaged into a fully tailored solution with the provision of a four hour fix support contract delivered from Lynx’s state-of-the-art Software Remote Support Centre and access to its field engineering resource.
Paul Edgeley, managing director, Lynx Technology, adds, “We have been able to offer Allerdale Borough Council a solution that will meet their telephony needs for today but is also scalable for future demands of the organisation. Not only does the new solution exceed the standards of traditional telephony but it also provides the capabilities and flexibility to remove the barriers associated with more complex solutions.”