Dubbo Regional Council

Client

Dubbo RC, located in Western NSW, provides a range of services to the City of Dubbo and surrounding towns and villages including Wellington, Geurie, Wongarbon, Stuart Town, Mumbil, Ballimore, and Eumungerie. The council employs approximately 450 staff and provides a vast range of services from water and sewerage, to roads, childcare centres, libraries, airports, livestock markets, art galleries, and the management of a theatre.

Opportunity

Following the merger of the former Dubbo City Council and Wellington Council under a united Dubbo Regional Council, Dubbo RC required the implementation of a new centralised IP Telephony and Unified Communication solution to be installed across their 32 office locations. The Dubbo branch was utilising a system that is now deemed end of life and unsupported; whereas the Wellington branch (formerly Wellington Council) operated an open source platform able to accommodate a smaller Council, but not to scale to meet the requirements of the new merged Council. The age of the hardware and its end-of-support status posed significant risk to Dubbo RC. The risk of system failure, coupled with the requirement to achieve consolidated business functions pressed them to look to market for a new feature rich IP Telephony and Unified Communications solution.

The Council aimed to provide a higher level of customer service by implementing a single contact centre to assist with queries from both of the former Local Government areas and improve the way information and queries were processed.

Solution

After an intensive selection process focusing on capability and value for money, the Cisco Unified Communications was selected. Outcomex was the integrator responsible for delivering the solution. Outcomex designed and implemented the Cisco IP Telephony and Unified Communication solution across multiple sites for Dubbo Regional Council.

We were able to meet Dubbo RC’s key requirements by deploying:

• Cisco Voice Appliances (BE6K) across two data centres for redundancy and resiliency
• Cisco CUBE and redundant SIP services across both data centres
• Cisco telepresence units for room based video conferencing between sites
• Cisco Jabber and Webex for presence, instant messaging and desktop video conferencing
• Cisco Unified Contact Centre Express for ingestion of customer queries via phone, email and web
• Integration of Jabber into Council tablet and mobile phone platforms allows extended presence with voice and video services

Impact

Dubbo Regional Council now has a consolidated, reliable, and supportable communications platform. The deployment allowed staff to efficiently communicate and collaborate through video, voice, and instant messaging across Dubbo RC’s 32 office locations with ease. What started as a project to replace ageing equipment resulted in the creation of a platform assisting the merging of two very different organisations. By implementing the solution, Dubbo Regional Council will have options for future growth, disaster recovery, and a more functional collaboration system. Further, Dubbo Regional Council is able to better respond to the needs of its ratepayers and ultimately service them better.