Connecting telephony systems at the NPTC Group

NPTC Group of Colleges is one of the largest providers of Further and Higher education in Wales. With two colleges and nine campuses, they cover one-third of Wales. Formed following a merger in 2013, the NPTC Group offers a wide range of further education courses from high school courses right up to University degrees.

An agile telephony system connecting the campuses

As the group became larger, its old legacy phone systems were no longer fit for purpose, and indeed the merger had left the group with two competing systems (Cisco and Avaya). This introduced many challenges, which was why when one of the systems hit a hardware failure, NPTC Group of Colleges decided that it was time for a change.

One of our partners, Conversant, got the brief to future-proof the Group’s communication. As the NPTC Group had already bought into other Microsoft solutions (Windows 10, Office, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint) and was using Teams for video conferencing, a ‘Teams Plus’ solution made sense. That’s why Teams Direct Routing was installed for 1,000 users, which enabled them to use Teams as their phone system. On top of this Luware Nimbus was installed as a contact center solution to provide extensive call management features as well as in-depth reporting for inbound and outbound call services.

An integrated interface that staff and students can use, with greater efficiency

Microsoft Teams and Office 365 became the main methods of communication within the organization for both staff and students. “We are delighted, as our staff can now make and receive phone calls on any device, PC, laptop, tablet at work or when working remotely. Moreover, changing the call flow when the college is closed or during holiday periods has become extremely easy, and reporting statistics enable us to effectively manage calls and tweak the system as and when required. We are seeing far more efficiency and far fewer problems.” says Colin Beavin, Head of Information and Learning Technologies.

This reference case study was originally published by Conversant and edited for brevity.