As one of the UK’s largest leading communities of children’s service providers, Polaris required a solution that ensured that their communication solutions didn’t let them down. After discussing their needs, we fitted and hosted a fully managed Cisco UC Solution that supports up to 2000 users both in offices and remotely that featured:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager
- Cisco Unity Connection voicemail
- Cisco Unified Contact Centre Express for Agents
- Redbox Recorders Call Recording
- VSR2 Wallboard
- Encrypted SIP trunks
We stayed with Amtech because price wise they’re quite reasonable and they’re also still small enough to be personable. They’re not BT, Virgin or Sky where you just get buried with red tape if you want to talk to anyone.
Why have you decided to maintain a strong relationship with Amtech?
“We stayed with Amtech because price wise they’re quite reasonable and they’re also still small enough to be personable. They’re not BT, Virgin or Sky where you just get buried with red tape if you want to talk to anyone.”
How has Amtech made a big difference to how you work?
“For us, if a process can’t happen because of an IT failure then there is a danger, it’s immediately an Ofsted problem with the child – which means the impact is quite severe. It puts what we do in context, we’re not just fixing printers and laptops, potentially we’re changing an experience of their young life if they’re growing up in a poor environment for whatever reason.”
“We often need the help, especially if it’s a serious Ofsted problem. For example, we have an out of hours service, where a group of social workers use the system to call in the middle of the night if a child who’s in care is in trouble, and we had a situation where the out of hours service dropped off – as tech platforms do – but it was a weekend, and Amtech managed to solve the situation quickly. When we did need them, they were there and that makes a big difference.”
Can you share a particular example of how Amtech has helped you to have what you needed?
“We started up a foster care recruitment team and James [at Amtech] had had previous experience of a similar setup with another client, so he knew what they did and how they got it working, so he was able to relate that to what we were asking and not copy what they did but we took some of the good things they were doing and used it for our new foster care recruitment team. So it’s just that little bit of inside knowledge of other clients and ourselves and then the ability of being able to match that up.”
“Our new requirements will often have a knock-on effect for our telephone system – that would mean we’d come up with what we think we need, we’d then pass it to Amtech, and they’ll then articulate what we require and say ‘you need this, this, and this and it’ll take 2 or 3 days.’ So they work alongside us rather than just sell us products. It’s much more personable and it fits us as a group.”
They’re like a telephony safety blanket – I don’t always need it, but I know it’s there when I do and I know it’s going to work.