Next Generation Communications, LLC (NGC) was hired by a New England based, not‐for‐profit, community‐based organization providing comprehensive mental health and substance abuse recovery services, health and wellness, special education, child welfare, foster care, employee assistance, and prevention and wellness programs.
The objective of this project was to assist the client in defining the needs of the user community and selecting a new telephony platform and vendor for the 800+ employees throughout the organization’s 20+ locations.
The primary catalysts for a new platform were: the current telephony platform consisted of Nortel and Comdial systems, which were at the End of Life status in their product life cycle and supported by two different equipment vendors; there were multiple telecommunications providers providing voice services; the IT staff did not have the resources to support all of the day to day telephone user requests; deal with multiple hardware vendors and carriers; there were daily issues with telephone services and hardware and finally the move add and change costs were growing.
The needs assessment uncovered a wide range of communications requirements for clinical and administrative personnel; critical phone applications such as 24 Hour Crisis Lines; after hours emergency procedures; residential facilities and school; unified communications and mobility features were required for clinical staff and the reliability of the platform and design of a robust disaster recovery plan was critical to minimize downtime for all of the locations. The IT infrastructure need to be upgraded to support a new platform and they needed a vendor that could support the day to day requests of the 800+ employees to allow the IT team the ability to focus on other critical applications and projects.
NGC developed the RFP and managed the selection process for the organization. There were six vendors who participated in the bid process and the final decision was the deployment of a hosted telephony platform for the organization. The UCaaS provider was able to meet all of the user requirements, provide direct support to users reducing the need for the IT team to handle simple questions and issues; provide a reliable and stable platform and eliminate costs associated with move, adds and changes and maintenance contracts.
The NGC team was asked to lead the implementation of the solution with the organization’s IT and management. We designed the call flow for all the locations including the deployment of a call center solutions for multiple programs within the organization.
NGC currently supports the client with all call flow management and design; day to day escalations with the UCaaS vendor and all internet connections for the enterprise.