The Opportunity
As a mid-sized college town located in Northwest Ohio, the City of Bowling Green was constructing a new City Hall building.
A top initiative for Chris Loveless, the new IT Director, was to prepare the city for a new hosted telephone solution (UCaaS) by the move-in date. The UCaaS system would replace not just telephony for City Hall staff, but all other city buildings/departments.
Because the City had limited internal knowledge of their existing telecom environment, they knew they needed external support. After evaluating consultants, the IT Director selected The BAZ Group to assist in overseeing the UCaaS project.
The Solution
The BAZ Group started by assembling an accurate inventory of Bowling Green’s billable voice and data services and discovering the telecom services and systems currently in service. Concurrently, the city evaluated UCaaS providers and selected Amplex, their local ISP.
With a solution selected, the city now had less than 6 months to meet the new City Hall move-in date. BAZ oversight included keeping all parties on task to hit critical scheduled deadlines.
But more importantly, we guided the city and the vendor’s representative as to what information needed to be assembled and what decisions needed to be made. We assisted the city in gathering some of the critical information and helped them understand the implications of key decisions required as the UCaaS solution was built out.
BAZ also:
- Facilitated the design and re-work of call flows (auto attendants).
- Worked with the city to identify the final disposition of all telephone lines and numbers (e.g., port, leave “as is”, or disconnect).
- Directed their telephone contractor with on-site “test and tone” work.
- Addressed all remaining analog requirements (e.g., fax and elevators).
The Results
The project was completed – not just on time – but ahead of schedule.
This allowed all city staff to be trained and get comfortable with their new phone service before the disruption of the move. At the scheduled move-in date, staff could simply pack up their phones and plug them in at their new desks.
Finally, BAZ reviewed the “after cutover” carrier billings to make sure all disconnected services had been removed.
Why BAZ?
Unless a client has technical experience navigating a UCaaS conversion, they are subject to the abilities of their vendor’s project team. A client may be fortunate and get capable support - but that is not usually the case.
Even under the best of circumstances, clients will need to make several decisions to support the design of their new phone system.
Experienced, industry-expert project management acting on a client’s behalf can take the pressure off the client to single-handedly navigate a successful migration. The experience and knowledge that BAZ project management offers improve a client’s outcomes for the delivery of a successful UCaaS project.
