The Parliament of NSW Electoral Office has moved to Samsung’s IP telephony system.
Under the contract, business communications provider Commander will supply 95 Parliament of NSW Electorate Offices with Samsung’s OfficeServ IP telephony system. Commander will also be the central point of contact for the electorate offices and will be responsible for training and ongoing technical support.
The NSW Electorate Office was previously using a private branch exchange (PBX) set-up and was looking for a system which could replace the old Commander analogue PBX system and leverage IP telephony. The analogue phone system had already outlived its shelf-life of five years and had been in place for more than 15 years. The electoral office also wanted to future-proof its telephony system.
“What we have done in each site is put in an IP solution — one of the Samsung’s IP OfficeServ range — and each site pretty much mimics each other. There are 95 sites, all with a minimum of five handsets in each site and basically at this stage, they’re all operating individually, but leveraging IP telephony throughout the offices and all throughout New South Wales,” said Paul Bailye, national channel manager at Samsung Communications.
The system is managed centrally by Commander, with its technicians located around NSW at points of presence.
“Because they have electorate offices spread so far and wide throughout the state, Commander were very unique in the fact that they had a local presence...at numerous places all over the state, which meant it was easier for us to roll out,” said Peter Durning, Commander Centre Sydney East director.
This enabled a smooth deployment of the Samsung system.
“I think the communication between ourselves and the team in parliament house really helped with that as well and we had it mapped out from before we even started the rollout — pretty much months in advance. So we had a very detailed plan as to how it was going to be rolled out,” Durning said.
“It was really just making sure that everybody was lined up and knew that it was going to happen on the particular date and we literally just have one or two to go due to a couple of relocations that need to be done.”
The new IP telephony system allows calls to be transferred more efficiently and professionally and has achieved cost savings for the NSW Electorate Office.
The Samsung and Commander partnership won the contract after a request for tender was initially sent out to 13 different organisations. This was eventually whittled down to two — the Samsung and Commander partnership and NEC.
After a trial period with both companies, Samsung and Commander were given the green flag to implement Samsung’s IP telephony system.
Bailye said there were several reasons why it got over the line ahead of NEC.
“Obviously [because of] the features that Samsung offers, but also the future-proofing that the Samsung platform provides, whether [it’s] down the future [and] they were looking to integrate a network [and] everything together, that opportunity is there for them,” he said.
The Samsung OfficeServ range is also BroadSoft certified, which gives the NSW Electorate Office further options for VoIP telephony in the future.
“All of their options for an investment protection point-of-view can continue to be utilised in any future requirements for them,” Bailye said.
The rollout of the Samsung OfficeServ system is expected to be completed by the end of this month. Follow Stephanie McDonald on Twitter: @stephmcdonald0
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