How Unified Comms helped a rural Fire Service become more digital…

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) works to keep residents, visitors and businesses safe from fire and other dangers across Nottinghamshire.  The Service employs approximately 900 staff across 26 sites within Nottinghamshire, so fast and effective communication and collaboration is key.

Fire Service lower costs with Unified Comms

NFRS had an old PABX (Private Automated Branch Exchange) telephone system in place at their HQ using out of date technology; in addition to this the 24 individual station sites and the service training centre were all using their own telephone system with individual telephone lines. This resulted in a very complex telephony environment with high running costs as every call made was an external one.

The current system maintenance provider could no longer provide support on the telephone system as the staff that could fix the legacy equipment had left their organisation.  To make matters worse the NFRS ICT Department had no internal skills to maintain the legacy telephone system, which created a significant risk to the business. It was also creating an administrative overhead as support had to be spread across every site.

It was clear that NFRS needed to simplify and update their voice infrastructure system, but with what?  A modern VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephony solution seemed to be the obvious choice…

The use of Unified Communications is growing

As NFRS had already invested significantly in Microsoft technologies, a Unified Communications (UC) solution using Skype for Business seemed to be the obvious choice.

Is Unified Communications the future?

A brand new MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network connecting all NFRS sites provided the opportunity to take advantage of new communications technology and remove costly legacy telephone systems. A unified communications solution using Microsoft Skype for Business (previously called Lync) enabled NFRS to achieve the following:

• Ensure external and internal calls work seamlessly for home and mobile users
• Enable the NFRS ICT team to easily manage the new platform
• Visibility of user availability via published presence information
• Excellent connectivity for multi device and channel communications, including text-based chat, video and audio calls
• Integration with old technology at Fire Stations to ensure easy transition for Fire Fighters and other station staff
• Provide a mechanism for distributing calls from publicly facing numbers to relevant departments and groups, using a balancing mechanism.
• Provide an interface for non-smartphone users to access their Mailbox and Calendar and have items read back to them.
• Consolidate the existing PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) connections to the central service, reducing the cost of maintenance and ongoing line rental costs
• Utilise the new fast and resilient MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network to provide low-cost telephone calls via VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and SIP (Session Internet Protocol) Trunking:

SIP Trunking Unified Communications

Unified Communications for Business

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service had some unique business requirements to integrate necessary legacy hardware with the Skype for Business unified communications solution, which included:

• Integration of Skype for Business with Fire Station Public Address system – staff at HQ can now “call” an entire station to broadcast over the speakers to ensure emergency messages are heard by everyone
• Increased gate security – centralised admin staff can now operate every remote site’s gate system and speak to visitors to verify identity which reduces overheads
• Call re-routing – in peak times calls can be re-routed to allow staff to answer phones for other departments, such as when many calls are coming to the press office, admin staff can answer on their behalf
• Wireless assessment – even rural stations have to cope with high levels of emergency calls and so wireless assessments were carried out to provide performance benchmarking to ensure consistent quality
• Virtual localisation – when a citizen calls a local fire station using its localised dial number, if no one is available to answer HQ will pick up the call and will be able to identify which station is being dialled. This ensures quicker call pick up times without any impact on citizens.

Top 5 benefits of Unified Communications

By implementing this Microsoft Unified Communications and Collaboration solution integrated with VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and SIP (Session Internet Protocol) Trunking technology the following benefits have been seen within the workplace:

1. Communication – increased productivity through instant communication
2. Collaboration – reduced travel for meetings through instant messaging, desktop sharing, conference calls and video conferencing
3. Mobility – fully integrated with smartphones (Apple, Android & Windows)
4. Contact Management – a single person directory or phonebook
5. Voicemail – listen to voicemails within an email on your PC or smartphone

Top 5 benefits of unified communications

 

On top of these key benefits NFRS have also noted a significant reduction in ICT support and training costs using the remote desktop control features of Microsoft Skype for Business.  Gavin Harris, Head of ICT commented that:

“People are getting to grips with instant messaging and presence and the rewards are being reaped already, we will save thousands and thousands of pounds in call costs. We will get more productivity from our workforce and the solution allows us to work a lot slicker.”

 

Benefits of SIP Trunking

Most importantly though, all calls within NFRS are made using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and SIP (Session Internet Protocol) Trunking technology, meaning calls costs have been dramatically reduced and the a large number of lines have been cancelled generating significant savings.  This project has clearly demonstrated the benefits of unified communications technology in the workplace.

Benefits of SIP Trunking

To discover how Unified Communications, Voice Over IP and SIP Trunking can help your organisation become more collaborative and save money in the process, contact Cloud Vision IT Consultants ‎@CloudVisionITC.