Brunel is a campus-based university situated in Uxbridge, West London, and is home to nearly 15,000 students from over 100 countries worldwide. Founded in 1966, the university combines teaching and research excellence with the practical and entrepreneurial approach pioneered by its namesake, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The striking 1960’s architecture sits alongside outstanding modern designs, offset by gardens and interconnecting pathways. The Schools of Health Sciences and Social Care, Engineering and Design and Business have all benefited from the addition of new, multi-million pound buildings. In addition, the Lecture Centre has undergone an extensive renovation, with hi-tech teaching equipment and improved social and study facilities.
Behind the scenes, the university relies on a Cisco Call Manager platform to serve around 3,000 extensions but when the system was originally installed in 2005, the administrators needed a better reporting capability. As Mandy Valentine, Estates Communication Manager explains, “With such a large number of extensions spread across many different departments it was difficult to generate accurate reports or spot issues like fraud and, after an evaluation, we selected Tiger based on its ease of use and features.”
Over the years, the original installed version of the Tiger 2020 suite has been regularly updated as the application has evolved. Valentine, as well as other colleagues from the University, have been regular attendees at the Tiger User Group (TUG) events, which take place several times a year. “Finding out about upcoming features, how other users get value from the system and the little tricks and tips is very useful for us,” she explains, “but it’s the ability to speak to the development team and see the results of the User Group suggestions ending up as new features or fixes that I find a real benefit.”
As Stephen Parris, Development Manager for Tiger Communications explains, “The User Group is a vital part of our development process and it allows us to gauge the needs of real people who have to work with our software, everyday.”
Stephen has been heavily involved with TUG since it was founded in 2002 and highlights new features in the 6.0 release such as Personal Call Management, Mobile Bill Imports, and Voice Network Security that all originally evolved from User Group meetings. “We currently have around 120 organisations who regularly attend our User Group and we would like to encourage more customers to join as it provides a valuable resource to us as a developer, and to the administrators of our platforms.”
Valentine is now preparing to upgrade to the new Tiger 2020 version 6 and adds, “One of the reasons that we are so pleased with the installation is that Tiger helps us to fight fraud, improve accountability and manage our telephone extensions with a single, powerful application. The software is getting better each year and we are part of that improvement process.”