Waveney District Council – a Unified Communications Case Study

Unified Messaging and Speech Recognition Software at Waveney District Council improves communications for staff and residents –

Placing communication at the centre of their IT strategies

Waveney District Council, based in Lowestoft, aims to consistently provide high quality, customer-driven services which meet the needs of local communities and residents.

An ageing voicemail platform needed to be replaced

Waveney District Council needed to source a replacement for its ageing voicemail platform which could also accommodate the needs of the growing number of staff who worked remotely – either at home, in other offices or in the community.

It was important to find a flexible solution that would both integrate with Novell GroupWise and meet the full requirements of the Council, in terms of budget, flexibility and service.

It was also essential to choose a switch independent solution, as the Council intended to replace their existing Siemens TDM platform with an IP switch further down the line.

Unified Messaging and Speech Recognition Software, CX-E, met the criteria

Following consultation, ProcessFlows recommended AVST’s CX-E unified messaging solution. CX-E met the Council’s requirements for:

• An all-in-one solution which delivered call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, fax, SMS, speech recognition and notification
• Could flexibly be integrated with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise

The Council wanted to optimise the functionality of CX-E’s auto attendant so that each member of staff can personalise their voicemail menu in order to provide more detailed information and therefore increase the service level for residents.

Migration to VoIP

ProcessFlows worked with Waveney to migrate CX-E into an IP environment, utilising a Mitel platform. IP immediately provided more flexibility to staff, who are able to change their voicemail settings from any web enabled device.

Benefits

The Revenues and Benefits teams, who experience heavy communication traffic from the public, find the unified messaging capabilities of CX-E a great help in maintaining service level targets.

Remote working is now easy as staff no longer have to be at their desk to be effective.