Case Study: UC, Contact Centre and Mobile Audit, Strategy, Procurement, Implementation

West Northamptonshire Council

WNC have responsibilities for Planning and Building Control, Council Tax, Waste and Recycling, Schools and Education, Adult Social Services, Housing, Benefits, Community Safety, Health and Leisure, etc.

The Client

West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) was formed on 1st April 2021 through the merger of three existing non-metropolitan districts of Daventry, Northampton, and South Northamptonshire. WNC absorbed the functions of these districts, plus those of the abolished Northamptonshire County Council.

WNC operate across several hundred sites and have over 5000+ colleagues which support the local community.

With such a wide verity of customers and services, security, robustness and service enablement is at the forefront of any business change.

The Chellenge

Each Council had their own IT and Telecommunications infrastructure and Soniza were tasked with creating a strategy which included, Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centre, Landlines and Mobiles.

Specifically, Soniza were tasked with creating a strategy which included:

Operating Cost Reduction – A reduction in operating costs.
Contemporary Working Model – Enabling a modern collaborative working environment.
Service Simplification – Simplifying the customer journey.
Improved Performance – Ability to serve customers more accurately, improving first time resolution and enabling more customer interactions to be managed.
Flexibility – Ensuring a solution is flexible and scalable, creating a solution which not only meets today's requirements but can adapt to future requirements.

The Project

The project included an audit and benchmark of all existing infrastructure, including four separate telephony platforms, four contact centres, traditional landline services and mobiles.

We then met with representatives across the Council to form personas based on job function and requirements. This provided us with the challenges which needed to be overcome and a detailed view of the current ‘State of Play’ . This enabled us to create a user profile matrix which we then applied to the different technology options.

Working with the project team we were able to hone the strategic options based on the wider goals of the project and create several strategy documents including:

UC, Telephony and Contact Centre Strategy – A detailed account of the options we reviewed and a recommended strategic approach to meet the business strategy.
Mobile Strategy – A mobile strategy which included a tariff review, benchmark, mobile operating system review and hardware review.
Business Requirements Document – A detailed list of the functional and non-functional requirements of the Council.
Procurement Strategy – A recommendation on approach to procurement for replacement UC, Telephony and Contact Centre infrastructure.

The Solution

The solution for WNC was created by using Soniza’s market knowledge and understanding of how contemporary technology works together and is licenced. By utilising this information with that of the user persona’s we were able to create a business case which met the goals of the project and wider business.

By adopting the strategy recommendations WNC have the following benefits:

Standardise Communication – All users will adopt the same functionality across the business.
Remote Working – All colleagues will be able to benefit from agile working.
Reliability – A replacement solution will enable much higher levels of availability.
Automation – By adopting technologies such as workforce management, speech analytics the Council can redeploy resource to other more customer focused areas.
Future Proofing – The strategy future proofs as the solution architecture is based on open standards and provided more functionality out of the box which is available.
Council Flexibility – The strategy will allow the Council to be agile, providing flexibility to support initiatives such as the property strategy, irrespective of the direction it takes.
Support & Maintenance – The Council will achieve a reduction in the support and maintenance resource requirements by simplifying the estate.