For a school that thrives to be exceptional and strives for perfection every day, Waingels College required a communication solution that matched their high day-to-day standards.
After consulting with Chris Jarred, IT Manager at Waingels College, we agreed to provide a unified communications solution for the school that included cloud backup capabilities for their Microsoft Office 365 suite, the full solution included:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager
- Cisco Unity Connection Voicemail
- Cisco Jabber softphones
- Singlewire paging solution
- SIP trunks
- Datto SaaS Protection for M365
We phoned Amtech up and told them ‘this is what we’ve got, this is the mess we’re in, can you help?’ Dave came down, sat here for 3 or 4 hours and worked through everything logically and got us back into a healthy position.Chris Jarred, IT Manager at Waingels College
You had a tricky situation when you first got in touch with Amtech, explain how Amtech was able to help…
“We were trying to find a replacement to take us on and get us out of the mess that we had. We tried a few [other suppliers] and nobody wanted to touch us with a bargepole, because the scope for it going wrong was huge. We had to take it all right back to square one and nobody was brave enough to go for it.”
“We phoned Amtech up and told them ‘this is what we’ve got, this is the mess we’re in, can you help?’ Dave came down, sat here for 3 or 4 hours and worked through everything logically and got us back into a healthy position.”
Can you share a particular example of how Amtech has helped you to have what you needed?
“The system that we’ve got doesn’t require proactive maintenance, so we only need to phone when something goes wrong – and it’s always been a swift turnaround. Over covid, when we had to close part of the school in a hurry and we had to do some things with the phone system, I was able to pick up a phone, ring one of the guys and say ‘I need some help now, any chance?” and they always said yes and helped straight away – that’s the sort of thing you appreciate – when your back’s to the wall and you need help and you need help right now, you need to be able to
phone someone and not be shoved through a ticketing system.”
“If we were to lose phones that would be fairly bad. The outbound would be the main problem, if we can’t phone for an ambulance or to contact parents then the health and safety side kicks in.”
How is Amtech making a difference to you?
“We stay with them because they understand the system. Because there are still some legacy quirks with it, the Amtech guys know that they’re there and know how to avoid them, so it doesn’t upset things.”
“They took our phone lines and converted them – we were paying £8k and now we’re paying £2k – and all achieved through a couple of changes and tweaks here and there. Over a few years, that’s an entire IT suite of PCs that we’ve saved.”
“It’s also about the level of support – the speed of support, the quality of the support that you get from Amtech.”
If you could sum Amtech up, what would it be?
“A comfy slipper – it fits, it’s nice and totally familiar with it.”
It’s also about the level of support – the speed of support, the quality of the support that you get from Amtech.Chris Jarred, IT Manager at Waingels College