The council was looking for a suitable replacement for its ageing voicemail platform. 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 imperative to choose a switch independent solution, as the Council had plans to replace the existing switch from a Siemens TDM platform to an IP switch.
AVST say local councils are now placing communication at the centre of their IT strategies and reseller Avanquest specialise in supplying best of breed solutions to the public sector. The Avanquest service began by means of consultancy with the council and continued through to implementation, support and training. Avanquest recommended the AVST CallXpress unified messaging solution as it delivers call processing, voice mail, unified messaging, fax, speech and notification and was therefore capable of meeting all of the council’s criteria. The solution also integrates with more traditional and IP switches than any other unified messaging product on the market, as well as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupware. This flexibility was important to the council.
Waveney District Council has implemented an 8 port CallXpress platform initially for 200 unified messaging users. This was connected by DPNSS to a Siemens Realitis and integrated into the GroupWise email/groupware environment.
The council revenues and benefits teams use the unified messaging capabilities of CallXpress extensively, as they experience heavy communication traffic from the public. The council is very pleased with the improvements in voice mail processing and therefore service levels in these sections. It has also found CallXpress invaluable in the hot-desking pilot, which will be rolled out to more council staff. Full unified messaging facilities are currently available to 250 users and this will undoubtedly grow as, like most local authorities, Waveney begins its rollout of home and remote working.