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Warwickshire Direct are a Local Government Body, combined of 3 areas – Warwickshire County Council, Warwickshire District Council and Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council.
From a stategic perspective, Warwickshire Direct changed the current system for a number of reasons, one of these being the want of ownership over their system and eliminating the need for a team of engineers.
With the need to remove infrasturcture on site and new government legislation around procurement in the public sector, Warwickshire Direct were eager to work with a system that could be managed internally, removing the need for infrastructure on site. In favour of the G-Cloud procurement pipeline, Warwickshire Direct decided upon a hosted plaform from ctalk.
The ability to create enterprise workflow and deploy phones to a more traditional back office environment with the same structure as the customer services environment allowed Warwick a much more streamlined approach.
Building smaller applications through workflow effectively showcased the flexibility and adaptability of the Ctalk platform, as well as providing a link from the workflow to the CRM system.
Martin Court, Project Manager at Warwickshire Direct explains that –
“The Lone worker Application is an excellent demonstration of using Ctalk workflow to design mini applications. Lone worker was built using Ctalk workflow, within the existing tools and knowledge of Ctalk. No 3rd party input was ever nescessary.”
One of the major requirements from the new provider was the need to move to an architecture which allowed each of the organisations to move forward autonomously, but to also be able to work in partnership operationally. This was only possible by adopting a hosted platform.
Using a Pay As You Go method on the GCloud Framework became a refreshing change for Warwickshire Direct. The GPS Framework allowed for much more flexibile contracts in current government funding. Being able to simply and conveniently add more agent and product licenses as they become necessary is a true benefit and example of the innovative procurement method now provided by GCloud.
Procuring through GCloud, a pre tendered framework model, allows for streamlined tender processes, reduced timescales and an ability to use a pre selection of criteria to search the GPS portal for suppliers.
Further to the strategic decisions that Warwickshire Direct made when choosing Ctalk Limited as a provider to their contact centre, one of the major factors is the compliance that is stipulated through central government decisions. The compliance required was PCI DSS, ISO27001 accreditation and privacy impact assessment achieved through being a provider on the GCloud framework.
Adopting a cloud strategy for their contact centre, Warwickshire Direct are able to reap the benefits of business continuity, Disaster Recovery and total building fail over – a vital aspect in terms of the strategic development for the company. The level of diligent Disaster Recovery provided is only possible through a hosted platform, and Wawrickshire Direct further increase their level of security for data by working with an ISO27001 accredited company.
From an operational perspective, Michelle DeCesare and Paul Cooney are part of the Innovation and Planning team at Warwickshire Direct, involved from the design stages. The support and structure involved throughout the project ensured that all members were well informed and that every step was approached with a “can do” attitude.
One of the main operational benefits that Warwickshire Direct have achieved is the statistical information that they are able to receive from the reporting and monitoring provided by the Ctalk system. Not only are they able to track what the agents are doing, but the information is now presented to them in real-time.
Michelle DeCesare, explained how the support that is received from Ctalk is exceptional. The level of understanding and responsiveness from the staff allows Warwickshire Direct to stretch the boundaries of what the system can do, presenting a “can do” attitude from both parties.
She further explained that for her, one of the highlight features of the new ctalk system is the intranet dashboard, allowing for easier navigation of call recordings. Using granular criteria to be able to search through call recordings reduces time for both supervisors and team leaders.
Paul Cooney, a member of Innovation and Planning at Warwickshire Direct, gave his comments on the system –
“Each member of staff is professional and helpful at every point. If anything is ever misunderstood, the staff will always take the time to explain in great detail.”
Martin Court also left his comments of the seamless transition of the system –
“The ability to move the main switchboard from the old infrastructure to the new, mid- morning in real-time without losing a single call, for me was one of the most impressive elements in the project”.
He further explains that “the strong relationship built up with Warwickshire Direct and Ctalk, along with Ctalk’s ability to deliver, completely vindicates the supplier route that we chose”.