City College Birmingham

The mission for City College Birmingham is to widen participation by delivering education, training and learning to young people and adults in the heartland neighbourhood communities of Birmingham. The college is dispersed throughout the Birmingham area and all sites offer services to accommodate the local community. The college caters for some 25,000 students, giving each one the opportunity to maximise their potential and contribute to their generation of the local community.

The Challenge

City College had a number of different telephone systems and these were being maintained by different companies. A centralised system was needed to simplify the telephony infrastructure and to improve communications both inside and outside the organisation. To better serve the community, City College also needed to direct calls to the right departments quickly so queries could be resolved in one phonecall.

Just like every college, registration time at City College was a busy time and the college needed to find a way of handling more calls during this peak period, to make the registration process easier for everyone.

Mobility around the campus was also a challenge and the need to provide an even better learning and teaching experience led to a requirement for wireless access across the campus.

These challenges combined, presented the opportunity to replace the telephone system and provide City College with a standard centralised solution across the campus.

The Solution

Amillan was chosen to provide a new telephony solution at City College. The disparate telephone systems were replaced with an Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise system supporting 800 users across all 11 sites. An Alcatel-Lucent OmniGenesys contact centre was also implemented to provide the functionality needed to deal with the volume of calls received during the registration period. The contact centre configuration can be changed during the year to make the best use of resources during peak and quiet times.

Using the Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess wireless products, a centralised wireless network was deployed. This was distributed across eight sites and provided the level of mobility needed by staff and students to enrich their teaching and learning environment.

Wrapped around all of these solutions was a full range of Amillan professional services that saw the solution designed, implemented and operating within strict timescales and within budget.

The Benefits

For City College, having a single centralised telephone system has greatly simplified communications across all sites. The wireless network has allowed staff and students to increase their productivity as they move around the campus, and the pain experienced during the registration process has been eased. These have had the most impact on the day-to-day running of the college and the following summarises some of the other benefits associated with the Alcatel-Lucent solution:

Standardised solution

A standard telephony solution is now in place across the entire campus, greatly simplifying the management and support of all users and sites.

Better reporting

Reports from the telephone system provide the information needed to ensure that during peak times or registration the maximum number of calls are dealt with in a timely way.

Flexible environment

Staff and students now have better communications throughout the campus for voice and data, making everyone more flexible and more efficient.

Reduced cost of ownership

More efficient handling of registrations and the standardised management and support of the system provides a cost effective communications infrastructure with reduced ongoing costs to the college.

The Future

In 2009, a new campus at Bordesley Green will open and Amillan are providing the cabling infrastructure for this. 1,200 Cat 5e outlets will be implemented across the site and the existing telephone system will scale to accommodate the new building.

With the Alcatel-Lucent solutions inplace at City College, the opportunities are endless. The systems can be used as the basis for providing distance learning and collaborative working with colleagues and students around the campus, country and the world. With the standards based platform in place, adding new applications and solutions will be simplified and effective.