Panasonic Communication Solutions provide a huge leap in operational efficiency, client service levels, and substantial cost savings.
We are extremely proud of the work CatholicCare does in Canberra and Southern NSW to support families, couples and individuals experiencing a broad range of issues from homelessness, to mental health, relationship problems, addiction, housing, aged care and disability.
Anne Kirwan, CEO
CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn
Challenge: A “mixed salad” of legacy equipment spread throughout multiple remote user locations, all with varying degrees of existing network infrastructure was proving cumbersome and difficult to manage.
Solution: The consolidation and reduction of network services, combined with the replacement of aging equipment resulted in a system that was easy to use and uniform across all sites, providing an overall reduction in operational costs.
Serving the wider community;
With great benefits come real challenges
CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn has been serving its community since 1957, by providing a wide range of help over a truly Australia-sized service area. While this is its real benefit to the community and to the individuals that it serves, it is also one of its greatest challenges. Not only were services de-centralised, but staff were often required to work at multiple centres. This, combined with non-rational communications systems that featured a “mixed salad” of aging equipment often with different feature sets across various platforms, made sites hard to manage. Some staff had to work with multiple extension numbers and multiple voicemail boxes.
CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn presented two challenges. The mixture of legacy equipment spread throughout 10 remote user locations were proving cumbersome to use and resulted in a significant loss of operating revenue. Two of the ten locations were main sites located in different areas (Red Hill and Blackfriars (Watson)) which needed to be utilised by all staff to deliver the required support services to the various local communities, all with varying degrees of existing network infrastructure.
We needed a system that was easy to use and uniform across all staff and sites in its operation. With staff frequently required to work from various locations, it was a logistical challenge with the previous equipment.
Jeremy Grainger, Senior Operations Manager
CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn
Developing the right solution to improve response times
Cost savings and efficiency are a high priority, especially for a non-profit organisation. Through rational consolidation of their communication systems and state-of the art technology, the organisation aimed at reducing both infrastructure and operational costs whilst providing a truly scalable solution to cater for their growth and expansion plans. Also, the need to leverage limited human resources across multiple locations demanded a fluid communication model.
The introduction of the latest Panasonic systems brought with it a myriad of benefits including increased flexibility, efficiency, high scalability and substantial cost savings. CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn also benefited from simplified system maintenance and management, plus the latest technology will allow room for future expansion.
The Panasonic KX-NSX1000 solution has provided CatholicCare with an easy to use and reliable system that allows our staff to effectively log on and work from any phone in the network.
Jeremy Grainger, Senior Operations Manager
CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn
Sedcom, a Certified Panasonic Unified Communications Partner, assessed the needs and challenges, and implemented a plan to deliver a powerful, feature-rich system to integrate communications and allow a timely response from staff and care givers.
Future proofing non-profit organisations
All types of businesses strive to cut costs, but for non-profit organisations, cost cutting is an absolute must. With the new setup in place, CatholicCare was presented with tangible benefits.
Due to a consolidation of network services, centralised SIP trunk channels allowed consolidation of the ISDN PRI service at Red Hill, resulting in savings of about $425 per month.
CatholicCare also experienced up to a 50% reduction in call charges – SIP Trunking also impacted calls to mobiles, the single highest value charge to the business, and cut overall costs in half. With planned upgrades and further consolidation across other sites, additional cost saving benefits will be recognised in the not too distant future.
The latest solution has also mitigated CatholicCare’s previous system maintenance and failure issues. For example, their aging EOL legacy equipment had been costly to repair. Faults and repairs often went unresolved, reducing both efficiency and productivity. With the new equipment and Panasonic support, this is a thing of the past.
As CatholicCare begins their next 60 years of service to the community, they can be rest assured that the organisation has the technical capabilities necessary to respond to the many vital human needs of the greater Canberra area.
Installation Overview
The system installation was completed by Sedcom Business Phone Centre, taking one month including configuration of the new systems, data migration and thorough testing. New systems were installed at four sites, with terminals installed in parallel to minimise customer downtime. VoIP service was provisioned to test call quality and call handling across sites.
The equipment chosen included:
- Panasonic IP Communication Server KX-NSX1000 (1 unit – Red Hill)
- Panasonic Hybrid Communication Server KX-NS700 (3 units – Red Hill, Watson, Ainslie)
- Panasonic DECT IP Cell Station KX-NS0154 (2 units)
- Panasonic IP Telephones KX-NT556 (2 units), KX-NT553 (119 units), KX-DT521 (4 units), KX-TCA185 (2 units)
Immediate benefits included:
- Platform standardisation offering consistent user experience
- Flexibility to support existing infrastructure where needed
- Ability to manage call volume across multiple sites
- Local fall over at larger sites
- Simplified system maintenance and management
- Use of latest technology with expansion capability
- Major and extensive cost savings on network access
- Reduced costs on additional workstations as a result of “hot desking”
- Substantial across-the-board savings
- Scalability for CatholicCare growth plans
By offering a solution tailored to the needs of CatholicCare, Panasonic delivered both system rationalisation and major cost savings. CatholicCare has a flexible and fully scalable solution to enable cost efficient growth and expansion into the future, thanks to the Ultimate Activation Key provided with the KX-NSX1000.