BACKGROUND
The City of Phoenix, Arizona's capital city, is the fifth largest city in the nation with over 1.5 million residents. With more than 40 departments and functions throughout the city including the Police Department, City Hall, the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and the Parks and Recreation Department, the City of Phoenix has over 14,000 employees who depend upon a reliable, easy to use voice mail system.

CHALLENGE
With its existing Octel® voice mail system rapidly reaching end of life, the City of Phoenix knew that it needed a robust solution that could seamlessly integrate with their existing Ericsson PBX infrastructure.

One of the biggest concerns facing Linda Henderson, IT Supervisor for the City of Phoenix, was that the new system would need to be able to emulate the city's existing voice mail system to maximize user transparency.

"The issues surrounding the deployment of a next generation voice messaging system are many. The ability to optimize the installation, minimize downtime and deploy the system in a seamless and transparent manner were critical components for us," Henderson added.

Another key challenge that the City of Phoenix faced was the associated costs and support for its large user community. One of the major goals that Henderson hoped to attain was a solution where there wasn't a per user license fee which in the previous system meant thousands of dollars each year. "As one of the fastest growing cities in the country, we needed to plan for tomorrow today and our unified communications solution would need to grow with us," she noted.

THE SOLUTION
After evaluating a variety of other voice messaging systems, the City of Phoenix chose CallXpress for its ability to seamlessly integrate with the city's existing hardware platform. Today, the City of Phoenix utilizes CallXpress to support its 14,000 city employees across a variety of departments and functions.

"The fact that CallXpress had a telephone user interface (TUI) that was similar to the Octel system in place made the transition to a new unified communications platform transparent," said Henderson.

For the City of Phoenix being able to implement and deploy a new unified communications solution without the burden of additional overhead or expenditures was a key selling point. Henderson noted, "If I had to name one overriding benefit of CallXpress it would be the single point of administration for multi-site locations. From an administrative standpoint, the system is easy to maintain, we can make all system changes and additions from one location - a huge benefit over the previous system."

“CallXpress was the best solution for the City of Phoenix," Henderson added. "Not only could it seamlessly integrate with our hardware architecture, but its ability to mimic the Octel user interface which is already familiar to our users is a strong factor. As a result, we had to invest very little in training to migrate our 14,000+ employees to the new system."

THE RESULTS
The City of Phoenix has standardized on a reliable, cost-effective platform - one that is capable of handling very large call volumes - upwards of 300,000 in a given month and in some cases, like the Family Services Center, with as many as 20,000 calls in an hour. "We realized early on that in order to meet the needs of our 14,000 users today, we needed to be able to deploy a robust, highly scalable and cost effective solution in a short period of time with minimal disruption to our current users who are scattered across more than two dozen city departments and functions," Henderson said. "With CallXpress all this is possible."

With CallXpress, the City of Phoenix is reaping financial savings as well. According to Henderson, "This year we expect to save $40,000 on license fees alone."

To date, the City of Phoenix has installed two CallXpress systems for its existing user base. In addition to the ease of implementation, the City of Phoenix cites the ease of use combined with an attractive maintenance offering as key benefits of the new voice mail system. The City of Phoenix was introduced to AVST’s CallXpress unified communications solution by Black Box Network Services, a trusted partner and a leading AVST authorized reseller. They understood the complex infrastructure of the City and recommended CallXpress to integrate seamlessly into their environment. They continue to provide first class technical support to the City of Phoenix with a dedicated onsite staff of six employees. “Black Box Network Services and AVST have been great companies to work with and we look forward to a great future with CallXpress,” says Henderson.

A best-of-breed unified communications solution, CallXpress delivers world-class call processing, voice mail, unified messaging, fax, notification and advanced speech-enabled personal assistant. It increases employee productivity, effectiveness and collaboration at a minimal investment. With all messages arriving in a single inbox, CallXpress greatly improves message management time. Its extensive voice mail functionality ensures that all employees receive their messages efficiently and have the ability to answer queries promptly.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
For 25 years, AVST has been shaping the evolution of communication, with more than 40,000 installations. Our award-winning CallXpress solution has been unifying communications for companies all over the world. So as the world of enterprise communications advances, you can be assured that AVST has your future covered. To learn more visit www.avst.com or contact us at +1.949.699.2300.