Staff frustration with an ageing PBX system has forced North Sydney Council to move to an integrated telephony system.
Speaking exclusively to Computerworld Australia about the rollout, the council’s IT manager, Stephen Fisher, said the goal of the project was to integrate a number of different council entities into the one system.
“The council's existing PBX was ageing and obviously needed to be replaced and we had disparaged systems across the office,” Fisher said.
“It was seen as an opportunity to bring all the sites of the council into one campus and reduce costs and introduce software that would never grow old.”
Fisher said he and his IT team of 10 chose to go to tender for the project, selecting Interactive Intelligence’s CIC.
“We went out to tender and there were a number of different companies...and we got down to two products,” he said.
“CIC’s Windows interface was a defining factor as it gives the council everything we need on a single platform and from one vendor...As a software system, it also provides us with cost-effective scalability.”
The project took 18 months from inception until its launch, with Fisher saying that it came in under budget and has been received positively by staff members.
“Its probably the best IT project I’ve been involved in from beginning to end,” he said.
“Everyone who was involved worked very well together.
“The staff get a phone system that is much more easy to use and the old days of having to remember numbers to transfer calls are gone.”
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