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Insights
Cardiff Council is the public sector governing body for Cardiff, the Capital city and one of the principal areas of Wales. Its education department is responsible for the local schools, adult learning, early years and childcare, services for young people and vocational education. A recent large project for the council was managing the transition of 128 schools to a digital telephony solution so that they are not left without communications after the UK Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) switch-off in 2027.
potential savings
different legacy telephony systems
telephony users
The council took this compulsory transition as an opportunity for digital transformation, rethinking the tools its schools use for communication, and what could be possible if all the separate siloed pieces of technology worked together in an integrated and holistic way.
Having chosen Avaya Cloud Office, which is part of the Avaya Communication and Collaboration Suite, the migration is ahead of schedule in the delivery of business continuity for schools, work agility for teachers and staff, and ease-of-use for admins whilst gaining cost efficiencies and economies of scale.
In the UK, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is scheduled to close in 2027. By that deadline, every phone line in the UK will need to have been moved to a fully digital network that uses Internet Protocol (IP) across a fibre-based service.
Huw David, Operational Manager for ICT Services and his team had a window in which to find the best solution for these schools, all with different legacy telephone systems and service providers.
“The phone systems in our schools had grown organically over many years. They all had different arrangements and their own negotiated contracts. Some were with one provider; others had a different set-up. We were dealing with differing types of handsets and technologies. We not only needed to transition all the schools ahead of the PSTN switch-off deadline, but we had an opportunity to choose a communications system that would enable economies of scale and a robust business continuity solution if stay-at-home rules were ever put in place again,” explains David.
— Huw David Operational Manager for ICT Services, Cardiff Council
As a public sector organisation, Cardiff Council must comply with procurement processes, including the due diligence to evaluate several digital telephony products sets on the market. Avaya’s ecosystem partner, FourNet, a specialist in secure cloud, CX consulting and digital transformation in the public sector, introduced David and his team at the council’s education department to Avaya Cloud Office, an all-in-one cloud phone system and collaboration tool. After thorough evaluation, they chose this as the solution that best met the requirements for the transitioning schools. And because FourNet was already on the all-Wales public sector procurement framework, purchasing was compliant and straightforward.
“We did an evaluation, we did the testing, we were happy. We went through procurement and then started purchasing the first batch of 500 licences for the first group of schools to be transitioned. From there, it’s been pretty straightforward,” says David.
Just over 18 months into the transition, 72 schools out of the 128 have been onboarded to Avaya Cloud Office, representing just under 2,500 users
“The project is running easily to time and is comfortably on budget. It’s delivering everything that we expected. Deployment is getting faster as we go along because we’ve learned what’s involved. If a school said to us that it wanted to be onboarded, we could probably get 50 handsets into that school tomorrow without any problem whatsoever,” says Huw David.
Because Cardiff Council Education Department is responsible for Cardiff’s local area schools, David and his team were able to survey how much they were spending on telephony per year, how many extensions and handsets they had and get a good idea of what would be required from a new communications system to cover all 128 schools.
“It looked like around £600,000 was being spent on telephony across Cardiff schools per year,” says David. “With Avaya Cloud Office, we were looking at potential savings in the region of £350,000, which for a public sector organisation, is money that could be diverted to spend in other much needed areas in the schools.”
Because Avaya Cloud Office runs on a subscription-based payment model, the schools only pay for what they use and the local authority benefits from economies of scale. For example: previously, all 128 schools would have had to handle payment of monthly or quarterly invoices from service providers and maybe maintenance support. Now everything is paid for centrally alleviating that administrative cost across all the school offices. “Everything was done repeatedly across the education authority. Now our schools don’t have to worry about anything from a telephony perspective. There are not going to be any unknown costs, call charges or that kind of stuff,” says David.
Avaya Cloud Office means contact numbers are not tied to a phone sitting on a physical desk or geographically limited to one particular school. This is a very agile way to work, which gives teachers and staff the flexibility to be contactable on one number wherever they are in the school building or elsewhere – although they can manage their availability to protect their focus time or personal time, if they need to.
This is a real benefit for senior staff, who often work outside the classroom. With Avaya Cloud Office, their school contact number will reach them wherever they are, so they can operate from a quiet place, or at home, and not have to use their own mobiles or landlines.
They can make phone calls and the recipient will only be aware that the school is calling them, not the location of where the call is from.
“Telephony is still a very big part of schools and that will remain the case for a long time to come,” says David.
In customer-facing organisations, the trend is for making contact online via forms or chat but when it comes to children, the need for contact is more immediate. Parents need to be able to report absences, and staff need to be able to contact parents quickly if something happens involving their child. But this contact doesn’t necessarily have to happen with staff unable to move from a particular desk.
Telephony isn’t just about the user experience. The admin experience also needs to be excellent. Avaya Cloud Office is providing Cardiff Council with simple but comprehensive management through a single pane of glass, meaning everything can be done from one management console where admins can view and download any analytics and reports they need for IT support.
“On another telephony platform someone was querying some information. We had the figures but no information about what they actually meant or ability to break them down. With Avaya Cloud Office, I can press one button and have that reporting information in front of me in one second, which is a major thing from a support point of view,” says David.
Some of Cardiff’s secondary schools have already made a considerable investment in digital telephony and so are prepared for the PSTN switch-off. It doesn’t make sense for these schools to rip out and replace this existing technology. With Avaya Cloud Office, there is no need to do this as it can integrate with other solutions. In future, Cardiff Council can innovate when it comes to these schools’ communications without disrupting their current business processes.
“There would be a benefit to all our schools being on Avaya Cloud Office. As those schools that already have digital systems could integrate Avaya Cloud Office on-top of what they are currently using, maybe this is what will happen future,” says David.
Also important for the Council, is to ensure business continuity for its schools in case stay-at-home rules are applied in future. Whereas many alternative digital telephony solutions require some sort of on-premises presence, Avaya Cloud Office only needs an internet connection. If the internet connection to a school should fail, then the Avaya Cloud Office mobile app will work with a 4G or 5G signal. This means that parents and staff can remain in contact, and voicemails, IMs and other automated communications will also work.
“From a business continuity perspective, Avaya Cloud Office ticked a lot of boxes,” says David. “The benefits are massive.
As the capital city of Wales, Cardiff is a proud and thriving city with the well-being and prosperity of its children, young people, and communities at its heart. We want Cardiff to be known as a city that promotes and delivers high quality education and learning as the key to success in the city and in a rapidly changing world. Cardiff is Wales’s first UNICEF Child Friendly City, a city where the rights of all children and young people are recognised and respected, and which is a great place to grow up.