Ensuring that all 37 locations remain easily accessible. OOZ was looking for a single, centralized, and future-proof telephony solution.

Telephony infrastructure for 37 schools

Challenge

Result

Introduction

OOZ provides public education in Zwolle and the surrounding area. The organization consists of 37 schools, where more than 1,600 employees provide education to approximately 12,000 students. The schools are spread across nine municipalities and offer elementary, secondary, and special education.

To ensure that all these locations remain easily accessible, OOZ sought a single, centralized, and future-proof telephony solution.

The Challenge / Current Situation

OOZ used two providers to supply fixed-line and cloud-based telephony services to various locations. As a result, the organization was working with multiple systems, different operating procedures, and separate management environments.

The existing solutions did not provide sufficient insight into employee availability. Phone extensions were tied to a location rather than to a person, and reporting capabilities were limited. There was also a lack of up-to-date documentation of the telephony environment, and certain processes—such as business hours and call-back requests—could not be sufficiently automated.

In addition, OOZ wanted to be kept more actively informed about relevant market developments and new opportunities within the telephony platform.

“Over the past 15 years, we have helped many companies and organizations transition from legacy systems to a more state-of-the-art telephony platform. Phone System is a system developed in-house that continuously evaluates and adapts to today’s requirements and needs. The integration of AI into telephony is one of the biggest changes in this area in recent times.”

Serge Poppes, CEO Pegamento

One solution for all schools and locations

OOZ was looking for a comprehensive cloud-based telephony solution that could be configured on a per-location basis. The provider was expected not only to supply the technology but also to handle its management and maintenance. In this way, OOZ wanted to minimize the burden on its own organization as much as possible.

After an extensive demonstration, OOZ chose the Pegamento Phone System. This cloud-based solution is built on open-source technology and is continuously being expanded and further developed by Pegamento.

With the Pegamento Phone System, employees can make calls regardless of their location or device. The solution is available for smartphones and computers and supports features such as incoming and outgoing calls, call forwarding, consultation calls, and the use of a central address book.

Greater clarity and control

Through the central dashboard, OOZ gains real-time insight into call volume, employee availability, and the number of people waiting in each queue.

The telephony environment also offers, among other things:

separate lines and phone numbers for each location;
flexibly adjustable day, night, and vacation modes;
automatic call forwarding and call-back options;
caller ID and answering machines;
customizable queue messages and hold music;
recording of conversations for training purposes;
reports at the number, queue, and location levels;
Up-to-date documentation of the entire telephony environment.

Users can easily be added to or removed from waiting lists. This allows OOZ to flexibly organize access by school and location.

Phased transition by location

The project began with a comprehensive inventory of all locations, users, phone numbers, and existing facilities. Next, the telephony environment was configured and migrated for each location.

The schedule took school breaks, exams, and other important events in the academic calendar into account. This allowed the migration to take place in phases and minimized the impact on classes and daily operations.

Telephony That Continues to Evolve

After implementation, Pegamento will continue to keep OOZ informed about relevant developments and new features. OOZ can also indicate which additional features are needed based on its practical experience.

A good example of this is the specially developed emergency response circuit. In the event of an emergency, only those emergency response team members who are actually present at the location in question at that moment are alerted. The system also automatically tests these circuits on a monthly basis by calling all registered emergency response team members.

The result

OOZ now has a single, centralized, and scalable telephony environment for all its schools and locations. Employees can work from any location and on any device, while administrators have greater insight into availability, usage, and performance.

With the Pegamento Phone System, OOZ has not only consolidated its various phone systems but has also implemented a platform that can continue to grow alongside the organization and the schools’ needs.

Applied technology