Central Highlands Regional Council is a Local Government Authority(LGA) covering approximately 60,000 square kilometres, situated near rich mineral and agricultural producing areas. Over 30,000 people call the area home.
CHRC employs approximately 380 staff servicing some 30,000 ratepayers. These staff are spread across a dozen major sites, including Council offices, Water Treatment Plants and engineering depots.
Council had legacy Nortel/Avaya phone systems spread across some of the sites – as a result of the Council amalgamations in 2008 there was a wide spread of phones and platforms in use. Some of the phone systems did not communicate over the Council WAN and were limited in functionality. In addition most systems had reached the end of their appropriate life and getting support for the systems was difficult.
The decision was made to replace these ageing disparate platforms and deploy Skype for Business services across the Council in order to integrate all Council communications services onto one unified platform. Insync worked with CHRC ICT partners Azentro and Telstra to provide carriage and hardware for the deployment.
“The Lync deployment has been a breeze with Insync, Azentro and Telstra. It’s provided us with increased productivity across the Council and introduced cost-savings with videoconferencing and less travel for Council officers”
Aaron Jurd, ICT Services
The biggest challenge CHRC faced was the introduction of software based telephony – no longer was the phone on the desk, it was in the Council PC and mobile devices. This presented an adoption challenge for CHRC ICT staff in ensuring Council staff were adequately consulted and trained for the forthcoming project. CHRC produced a series of awareness videos and conducted awareness sessions at all Council offices to prepare CHRC staff for the impending changes.
Evaluate your Microsoft agreements – cost savings can be made by maximizing your investments in this space
Consider your technology silos and whether Skype for Business could reduce spend in other areas (e.g. WebEx, GoToMeeting)
Document your business requirements from a telephony system – ensure you are delivering the functionality your users require at Day 1
Council has achieved greater productivity for Council officers – there is now a single tool to collaborate with internal and external parties, as well as providing desktop videoconferencing facilities for distributed teams.
No longer do staff need to travel hours from remote offices to Emerald or Capella to undertake training – it can be done via Lync in real time without delay. CHRC has also implemented an Enghouse Interactive Contact Centre (EICC) that is used by the Customer Contact staff.
All inbound calls, emails, faxes and social media mentions are routed through to the Customer Contact centre. EICC sits on top of Lync and provides additional functionality specific for call centre deployments.
CHRC is upgrading to the latest Skype for Business released and rolling this out to all staff. CHRC is also looking to leverage Skype for Business optimized videoconferencing devices for a wider room based rollout, as well as evaluating the use of the Microsoft Surface Hub for huddle rooms and collaboration spaces.
Linc Energy 
