Home / News Article: Portland Community College Deploys VoIP to Meet Growing Telephony Needs
Portland Community College Deploys VoIP to Meet Growing Telephony Needs
All Articles, KRP Communications
June 23rd, 2010 / All Articles, KRP CommunicationsWith more than 87,000 students, Portland Community College (www.pcc.edu) is the largest community college in the State of Oregon. PCC serves over 1,000,000 college-age residents in a five-county, 1,500 square mile area in Northwest Oregon through distance learning programs, three comprehensive campuses and dozens of locations throughout the community.
PCC wanted to improve its daily telephone communications with its constituents, but quickly realized that its existing telephone system was unable to provide key information, such as what call volumes were and how calls were being processed. “We also wanted a way that could provide us with greater agility in the work environment,” said Sharlene Norton, PCC Telecommunications Manager. “Specifically, we were looking for a new telephony solution that would enable our staff to work remotely through desktop and Web clients while staff appeared to be at PCC locations. We also wanted a way that we could have our phone calls follow us by routing calls to a number where we could be reached in the field.”
In 2008, PCC developed and issued a request for proposal (RFP) to eight different VoIP (voice over IP) vendor companies. The RFP team consisted of representatives from PCC Purchasing, along with technology management and staff, an outside consultant and internal customers. Vendor companies were invited to participate in a “bake-off” where each company had a three-week period to install and demonstrate its telephony solution in PCC’s environment. Nearly 20 PCC staff members participated by exercising each system that was installed. At the end of trials, KRP Communications’ Interactive Intelligence VoIP system received the highest rating from PCC’s RFP committee and was awarded the contract. “Customers liked the sound quality of the speaker phones, the desktop client, the customer service from KRP, and KRP’s technical support,” said Norton.
For purposes of system installation, PCC organized its project into multiple phases, with an overall goal of completing all installations by December, 2011.Thus far, nearly 300 users at two call centers, the Technology Solutions Services department and three campus locations are using the system. Seven more PCC locations are scheduled to complete system installation by December of 2011.
“This is a major installation, and we have four main committees guiding this project,” said Norton. “A steering committee is comprised of senior technology management, a campus technology manager representing the various customer groups, network, telecommunications and customer service staff. They provide oversight and guidance to the project. We also have an infrastructure committee that is comprised of telecom, network and server administration staff. It is charged with providing recommendations to the steering committee and implementing approved recommendations.”
Norton says that PCC call centers now can see how many calls are in queue and receive regular reports on call volumes and how calls are being processed. “Our technology help desk has increased the handling of calls by over 33 percent without increasing staff,” said Norton. “We can see missed calls on our desktop client or phone screen and connect with people who didn’t leave voice mail. This is a better use of technology than we have had in the past, and a major portion of that technology is our VoIP system.”
Once end to end implementation is completed, PCC plans to add more capability to its call centers and possibly its Remedy work order system.
“VoIP implementation requires a lot of work and planning, plus working with other departments,” said Norton. “But with excellent project management and consistently strong support from KRP, it has been a good experience. We are grateful to have KRP as a business partner.”
Download the PCC Case Study PDF here.