The University of Hertfordshire is one of its region’s largest employers with over 2,600 staff and a turnover of £235m. With a student community of 27,500, including more than 2,000 international students from over 85 countries, the University has a highly complex telephony network spanning over 3,000 extensions.
The telephone network is undergoing extensive changes over the next few years as Ed Flanagan, Support Services Manager explains, “it’s a very transitional time as we move from our legacy PBX to Voice over IP and Tiger is helping us across many areas.”
The University originally chose Tiger 2020 in 2010 following an extensive selection process. “We looked at a number of options and Tiger was considered the most cost effective and the ability to add modular upgrades such as anti-fraud and internet accessibility was extremely useful,” explains Flanagan.
Working closely with technical teams from Tiger, the University initially carried out a data cleansing exercise which immediately freed up 200 extensions. The additional deployment of the Tiger Voice Network Security module “Has been useful in monitoring abnormal calling patterns and enabling us to reduce these or recommend alternatives. In addition, cost comparisons with different service providers have been used to ensure that we continue to gain value for money,” explains Flanagan.
Another key requirement was establishing a “charge back” mechanism to help individual departments understand communication charges and become more responsible for costs. “Under the old systems, it was a laborious task to generate bills and these were almost impossible to decipher,” he explains, “The new reporting from Tiger makes it very easy to generate reports that can be understood which gives departmental fund holders the tools to start making savings on their own.”
Tiger 2020 has already been deemed a success and Flanagan points out that as the University completes its transition to a fully VoIP network over the next few years, the benefits are likely to grow even further. “Having a single application to help with reporting, fraud detection, capacity planning and charge back is definitely helping us to reduce our telephony costs while making it easier for us to plan our evolving telecommunication strategy.” He concludes.