The University of Huddersfield is a growing centre of research and excellence. Spread over three campuses in Huddersfield, Oldham and Barnsley, each year the University helps over 23,000 students (from school leavers to those returning to education) achieve their goals. Over 2,000 staff working within seven academic schools aim to push the boundaries of knowledge while providing high quality teaching in an exciting and stimulating environment.
The University opened its newest campuses at Oldham and Barnsley in 2005 which also coincided with an upgrade to its telephony system to include a Tiger 2020 call management system. The University has successfully used Tiger 2020 for the last 6 years for reporting, capacity planning and departmental charge-back for its fixed line calls.
However, with an increasingly nomadic workforce, the University had seen a steady rise in calls from the 500 work issued mobile phones it supports. “Our mobile phones are intended for work use although, occasionally, people do need to make personal calls,” explains Anne-Marie Greenwood, Telecoms Manager for the University, “It can be difficult to work out which are personal calls and manually going through pages of bills was simply not feasible so we turned to Tiger for assistance”.
Using the Tiger Communications 'View My Calls' add-on, each month the University loads an electronic billing file supplied by Orange that is reconciled against a list of work and personal numbers provided by each user. Any unknown numbers are flagged and sent in a monthly report to each user who can quickly assign them as either work or personal using an easy to use web portal. Each update is remembered for the future, which means that, after the first few months, the systems can automatically assign charge-back with minimal user intervention.
“The system also allows staff and managers to look at their own call logs and overall departmental spend to help better manage budgets,” explains Greenwood.
The University is initially trialling 'View My Calls' within the IT department and working on integration with its Active Directory and user log-on systems to ensure the system is easy to use and secure. “We hope to roll out the full system next year across mobile and fixed lines and we believe that it will help our users better manage billing and reduce call charges while helping us to spot any inappropriate calling patterns,” Greenwood adds.