Wiltshire College Saves £70,000 Per Year with 3CX

As one of the largest colleges in the UK, Wiltshire College needed a phone system that made communication between campuses effortless and kept costs to a minimum. 3CX scored top marks by revolutionising staff and student communications, all whilst slashing thousands off their phone bill.

The Challenge

Wiltshire College needed to create a unified, scalable communications infrastructure that would serve all four of its campuses. At the time, each college was running its own telephone system (three Siemens®* ISDX systems and one Avaya®* Index) and as a result, the costs were stacking up.

With approximately 1000 employees needing to use their communications system on a daily basis, Wiltshire needed to combine high-quality features with a cost-effective, scalable system. Something that would free it from the kind of expensive service contracts endemic to hardware-based PBX systems.

The new phone system had to be robust, simple to install, and easy to administer from a central location. The college required a number of core telephony services, including call forwarding, queues, group ringing, hunt groups, presence, auto attendant, inbound and outbound call routing, a softphone option as well as call logging and reporting.

Wiltshire College ICT support staff would ultimately manage the system, so its interface had to simplify day-to-day tasks such as adding new extensions, staff relocations, and changing routing rules without having to pay expensive call out fees to a PBX specialist. Finally, the college wanted to be able to add advanced features to the phone system at a later date, including on-screen call control, conference calls, call recording, hot-desking, CRM integration, and mobile phone integration.

3CX Offers a Solution

Following a formal tender process the contract was awarded to 3CX Certified Platinum Partner TRI-LAN I.T. Limited. Wiltshire College found the 3CX Phone System to be feature-rich and cost-effective. The college’s IT team appreciated the system’s flexibility, and the fact that 3CX is Windows-based and runs on existing hardware. The College is a Microsoft site, and its staff are trained on Windows. 3CX also proved three times cheaper than any other telephony option the college considered.

TRI-LAN was responsible for all software installation and configuration at the college, together with all ISDN gateway installations. Wiltshire College ICT team, meanwhile, carried out the physical rollout of 650 SIP phone handsets. These SIP phones supported a number of key features, including dual 10/100, PoE, display, system directory, history, headset, speaker-phone, message waiting indicator, and conference calls.

The migration took place in a single evening. All external Wiltshire College primary rate lines were decommissioned from the old PBX switches and connected to new Patton ISDN-SIP gateways, following which the 3CX Phone System went live – the total changeover only took two hours.

Read the press release about Wiltshire College choosing 3CX Phone System here.

wiltshire college

“3CX Phone System is proving flexible and reliable. It’s on target to reduce our ongoing telephony maintenance, line rental, support, and call costs by 70 percent per annum, at about £70,000.”

Stephanie Stephenson, Director of Customer Services, Wiltshire College

The Results

3CX has helped the college reduce the cost of its phone system by a staggering 70%. In particular the reduction in maintenance expenditure and set up costs for new extensions has been welcomed by the college's IT team.

With help from 3CX, Wiltshire College staff are now more accessible, both to students and to each other, as call queue management has improved significantly. There is now tighter integration between the four campuses – using 3CXPhone for Android and iPhones, travelling staff can connect on the road or at home.

The Wiltshire College team particularly appreciates the 3CX Call Center Module, which provides advanced real-time queue strategies, agent statistics, Call-Back and SLA alerts for a fraction of the fees charged by traditional call center software. The 3CX Call Center Module also lets the college monitor calls, manage workflow, and track how many staff members are logged into the phone system at any one time.

Nine years after their initial installation, Wiltshire college is still reaping the benefits of its 3CX Phone System. Much like Stonehenge, 3CX is now a permanent fixture in Wiltshire.

The Customer

wiltshire college logo

Wiltshire College is one of the largest colleges in the UK and is the main provider of further and higher education in Wiltshire. Today, 3,300 full-time students, 6,000 part-time students, and 900 University Level students attend Wiltshire College at its four campuses. Its reputation for quality provision, innovation, and student care is without par.

*All trademarks mentioned are not affiliated with 3CX, its products, or its websites. The owners of these trademarks are not the source of, and do not sponsor or endorse, the products/services promoted here. All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.