Case Study: County of Waukesha

Headline

Waukesha County Replaces Legacy Octel® with CallXpress®

Background

Located directly west and adjacent to Milwaukee County in Wisconsin with a population of over 381,000, Waukesha County is the third largest county in the state and among the fastest growing counties in Wisconsin. Waukesha County Government has 1,500 employees spread over 20 departments. Most workers are employed in a five building campus in the city of Waukesha, with the rest working in remote locations, including parks and golf courses.

Challenge

The County has many different functions, from emergency response and public safety to social services and recreation. Each has unique requirements for their communications infrastructure, but one common denominator is the need for unsurpassed reliability. Downtime is not acceptable.Waukesha County relied on their 36 port Octel VMX 300 for their voicemail and auto attendant requirements since 1991. While the Octel system had been very reliable, age had caught up with it making replacement parts difficult to get, creating high maintenance costs and causing intermittent connectivity issues for administrators trying to manage the system. Waukesha County averages 119,000 calls per month and supports over 20 departments, so they needed a new messaging solution that would keep their community connected 24 x 7. One of the biggest concerns facing Allen Mundt, IT Infrastructure Administrator for Waukesha County, was that the new system would need to provide existing call processing and voicemail functionality and be extremely reliable.   In addition, it must integrate with the County’s current Centrex telephony system and support their future transition to IP telephony.“Good taxpayer accountability demands that we invest in quality technology. The system we select must install and work the first time and continue to work year after year. No throwaways allowed.” said Mundt.

Solution

After evaluating the RFP responses for a variety of other voice messaging solutions, Waukesha County selected CallXpress for its full feature set of call processing and voicemail features, its ability to emulate the user interface of their Octel system to minimize user training, and most importantly its reputation for extreme reliability.“A major benefit of CallXpress is its history. This platform has nearly 30 years of development all built on open standards. It was a system we knew we could trust. “said Becky Calder, Telecom Specialist for Waukesha County.One unique requirement CallXpress met was the need to seat juries in a timely manner. Through the use of the auto attendant and voicemail features, citizens called to jury duty do not have to show up to the courthouse unless they are needed. Each citizen receiving a jury duty notice is given a sequence number and asked to call the courthouse to get instructions. After giving the auto attendant their sequence number, the call is routed to a voicemail box where instructions are given to either appear in court, call back at a later date to get new instructions or receive a jury duty completion notice. This system provides the court with the proper number of jury pool members, while minimizing the waiting time for citizens called for jury duty.

Results

Waukesha County worked very closely with Advanced Call Processing (ACP), a trusted AVST reseller, to prepare and ensure a smooth transition. ACP was able to dial into the county’s Octel system to record all their automated prompts and move users to CallXpress. ACP programmed the CallXpress system in such a way that most users had little need for training or transition time. The configuration of the CallXpress system was done by ACP remotely to eliminate any inconvenience or interruption with county business.CallXpress installed flawlessly.   When it finally came time to take down the Octel system and install the CallXpress system one Friday evening, the whole process took only 90 minutes. In fact most of the time was spent running the physical telephone lines from one end of the telephony room to the other.   Comparing the process to a baseball game, Mundt said “The install was not just a home run, but it cleared the upper deck and hit a car in the parking lot”.Some other pleasant surprises were how easy it is to administer CallXpress.   According to Calder “I am now able to revamp the auto attendant in less than 20 minutes, where with the Octel it would take days because I had to schedule an appointment with my service provider. Common functions like adding new users takes only minutes. It is very intuitive” Recognizing the need for the utmost in reliability, Waukesha County signed up for the ACP Support Plus Plan. This support plan from ACP combines AVST’s XpressCare software maintenance program that ensures the county has the latest software upgrades for CallXpress with 24 x 7 support by ACP. In the event of any unexpected issues, the county is ensured of a rapid response from ACP and AVST.

About ACP

Advanced Call Processing (ACP) is a comprehensive provider of telecommunications services and solutions with a customer base spread across the United States and throughout the world. Established in 1990, ACP has enjoyed exceptional growth, while supplying customized solutions for hundreds of businesses and government agencies.    ACP has assisted hundred of companies to achieve their business goals while controlling costs through the effective deployment of communications technology.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions with over 10 million users that rely on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With nearly 30 years of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that increase user and business productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers unprecedented interoperability and delivers advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners.