Nuffield Health Case Study
Address : | Nuffield Health |
Installed : | January 08 |
The Site:
Nuffield Hospital Glasgow is part of the Nuffield Private Health Group and is located on Beaconsfield Rd in the west end of Glasgow. The hospital provides scheduled private health care, both consultancy and surgical. It caters for both outpatient and stopover surgeries and treatments. The campus is made up of the main Hospital and Nuffield House which is situated approx 500m away.
The Relationship:
TACS historically were utilised on a “diagnose and repair” basis on the existing Siemens switch which supported in excess of 200 telephones on the main Hospital site. This was linked by DPNSS to a Centrex switch supplied by THUS telecom which supported 50 telephones on the Nuffield House site. This meant anything outwith the Siemens or THUS equipment Tacs fixed on a time and materials basis.
Need to change:
The Siemens switch began to fail on a regular basis and the local management alarmed at increasing repair bills and reliability asked TACS to consult on possible courses of action. TACS Service Manager Gordon Inglis takes up the story.
"I arranged a meeting with David Snape the General Manager, and Phil Spence the Telephony Supervisor to discuss their requirements. It was pretty evident in discussion that the Siemens system was down more than it was up due to age and refurbished equipment proving unreliable. Concerns on response times taken by existing maintenance providers were also a major concern. They intimated that any proposed system would be required to support the following features:
- ISDN30 trunks,
- Direct Dialling to desk,
- Operator Consoles,
- Voice Mail with remote interrogation,
- Comfort messages for queuing customers,
- Interconnectivity with existing Multitone Dect handsets,
- Call Centre working,
- Call Management software
- interconnectivity with the Centrex system at Nuffield House.
I then took some time over a few days to survey the site and to fully understand how Nuffield worked at that moment and chatted to existing vendors as to what they provided. Once that was clear and catalogued, the choice of system to propose was crystal clear".
The Proposal
"I proposed a Panasonic KXTDA600. This system was an expandable platform that boasted all the features required and more to boot. Digital telephones were allowed for the power users with the ability to work in tandem with their existing Dect system, with Berkeshire 400 alog telephones for the other locations. Panasonic operator consoles were to be allowed on PCs’ at front of house (which when installed proved to be an instant hit with the receptionists). A Panasonic KXTVM200 8 port voicemail was allowed for and an IQ2000 voice network interface which converted the existing DPNSS link between sites to Qsig protocol. Commsoft call management for Panasonic was proposed to monitor spend and traffic. Our usual 1 years maintenance (same working day), free project management and end user training were also offered.
In order to offset the expenditure of purchasing the new solution savings had to be made somewhere to fund the project. I looked at their existing spend on lines and calls. I was able to offer savings of 13.5% through our partner PACE Telecom".
Delivery
The proposal was accepted in full and a date was set to install. All telephones and devices were catalogued and an installation project plan and schedule were formulated and accepted by Phil Spence. It was agreed that the changeover should take place on a Sunday with a no break changeover. This was duly achieved painlessly. End user training for Power Users and critical staff was achieved on the Monday. Train the trainer training was done with Phil Spence and he manages the end users to this day. We dial in on demand to effect small moves and changes when requested and continue to offer free consultancy on all telephony and data matters.
Its almost 3 years now since install and to date there have been no major outages due to the Panasonic KXTDA600 system which is living up to its 99.99% reliability boast.
