TelcoSwitch, a provider of unified communications and compliance solutions, has recently provided a CallSwitch cloud-hosted UCaaS solution to support community-based care and not-for-profit organisation, The Lantern Community in Dorset UK.
The Lantern Community offers adults with diverse learning abilities the possibility of sharing life with others in a community environment. It offers provision of housing, personal care, and support services, opportunities for work experience, and activities for educational and artistic development.
The community has around 50 support workers within the organisation who require communications solutions to connect and collaborate with one another and help to ensure safety for the individuals they support. The overall project's scope was to provide ‘Cyber Safe’ network, incorporating secure local and wide area connectivity, with a transformation from on-premises to Cloud-based services for applications, voice, and data.
Ken Moody, Digital Transformation Consultant said, “Lantern offers invaluable support to a great number of adults, helping them achieve their full potential, so we began our transformation project with the goal of getting them set up with modern connectivity infrastructure and the communications systems – all at a cost that allows them to continue their work without additional financial burden.
“The existing cabling across the site was outdated in places, meaning connectivity was patchy, and on-site servers were housing both data and the PBX for mostly traditional landlines. These lines were also spread across several providers. The whole setup was not cost-effective, and not as secure as needed, and it was putting a lot of pressure on support services.”
Ken and the Lantern leadership team selected a CallSwitch system to offer modern communication and collaboration tools to the employees on the campus, with around 50 users benefitting from a choice of DECT devices, traditional desk phones, and access to the CallSwitch Communicator application on both mobile and desktop.
Included as part of their solution, Lantern was able to benefit from a service wrap that included an onsite engineering presence for deployment, new hardware, user training where required, porting that enabled the organisation to maintain existing careline numbers, free calls between extensions, and a simple in-life ticketing system.
The overall digital transformation project entailed infrastructure upgrades including deploying fibre across the whole campus and installing a 1GB leased line to replace the multiple DSL connections formerly in place, as well as moving all data to the Cloud.
Since implementing CallSwitch, The Lantern Community has benefitted from both enhanced communications and cost-saving, helping them support the individuals who rely daily on their vital services.
With mobile and desktop access for workers, the organisation can offer more flexibility around ways of working, with support staff more easily able to stay in touch when moving around the campus, benefitting from soft client dialling when at a computer.
Additionally, through a single system, it is now possible for workers to arrange scheduled and ad-hoc conferences, increasing efficiency while making use of customisable presence settings that help them know their colleagues’ statuses.
Robert van Turenhout, Finance Manager, The Lantern Community added, “We’re very pleased with our CallSwitch system. It has more features than the solution it is replacing that help our workers stay in touch wherever they are on campus, allowing them to focus on delivering the high levels of support our residents deserve.
“The project for delivering the system was excellent, with a transparent quotation, and a quick turnaround once we decided to proceed. Having engineering support onsite was invaluable, helping us deploy new and varied hardware across the campus, and having our team trained on how to use the system will make a great difference.”