With a Verge IP phone on your desk and the Allworx Reach™ mobile app in your pocket, you can talk on the go or in the office. Without missing a beat.
Isn't it time your desk phone knows who your important contacts are?
Kendall Sawa, chief administrative officer of Ocean Beach Hospital, got a phone call in the middle of the night. A power surge had completely destroyed their old Nortel phone system. Nobody could call in or out. This was a serious crisis; they needed a new communication solution and they needed it immediately. Kendall called Pacific Networks, a company Ocean Beach knew and trusted.
Ocean Beach is a community owned and operated hospital with two medical clinics. Fortunately, the management team had already been researching a new communication solution for almost a year. They wanted state-of-the-art technology, the ability to easily expand or contract the number of users, reliable system redundancy, and ease of management. Allworx systems met their requirements and fit their budget. And just as importantly, Allworx and Pacific Networks were responsive to their urgent need.
Denny Ghim at Pacific Networks took the panicked call. He made a long series of phone calls late into the night and pulled together a plan to get Ocean Beach up and running again. Within just 12 hours, 22 Allworx IP phones that had originally been in the Pacific Networks office were servicing critical lines at Ocean Beach. By the end of the sixth day, they were fully functional on a new Allworx 48x VoIP communication system, powering 75 of their 150 total desk phones. The additional 75 phones were phased in over the following weeks. “The Pacific Networks responsiveness has been a big part of what has made this experience so good,” says Kendall.
“We really didn’t know what we were missing until we got into the Allworx system. We’ve been very impressed and happy.”
—Kendall Sawa, Chief Administrative Officer
The Allworx 48x system provides a complete VoIP communication solution with presence management and integrated voicemail out of the box. Presence management enables the staff to see who is available in the office, and pre-configured call routes use that same presence information to get incoming calls to the available staff members.
Ocean Beach also decided to deploy the smaller Allworx 6x system in one of its off-campus medical clinics, taking advantage of Allworx’s Advanced Multi-Site software application to bring the main hospital and the off-campus clinic under one integrated system
This multi-site integration allows Ocean Beach to realize operational benefits such as extension dialing between the locations, unified directory and voice mail, and shared staff presence information. They are now considering adding a third location to the Allworx system in the near future.
The front desk and admissions staff are using the Allworx Interact™ Professional application to manage incoming and outgoing calls right from their PCs.
Interact Professional combines the efficient PC-based call control features with the voice quality of the Allworx IP phones to improve employee productivity. Using Interact Professional, the staff can also easily monitor call logs and do one-click call recording, which offers additional legal protection.
Ocean Beach is happy that Allworx IP phones come with enough programmable buttons to offer easy one-touch dialing between the offices. Kendall also says that the built-in speakerphone quality is excellent – as good as any conference phones they’ve evaluated. The speakerphones, in conjunction with Allworx’s Conference Center feature, make hosting virtual meetings easy and cost effective.
Allworx Interact Professional: A sample layout for an illustrative purpose only.
Ocean Beach is still in the process of adding more advanced software options from Allworx. Kendall says, “We really didn’t know what we were missing until we got into the Allworx system. We’ve been very impressed and happy.” The Allworx system has been a critical element in Ocean Beach Hospital’s ability to drive down costs and improve operational efficiencies. The IT team finds Allworx’s web-based administration tool extremely easy to use. And despite the addition of another fiber line for redundancy, the installation of the Allworx SIP trunking technology has enabled Kendall to renegotiate the contract with their monthly carrier, resulting in a monthly expense reduction of 32%.
Kendall would not recommend implementing a communication system in a crisis mode to anyone. But Pacific Networks and Allworx have delivered a solution that will work for Ocean Beach Hospital today and for years to come, paying for itself by reducing telecom costs and improving operational efficiency.
Industry: Health care
Locations: Ilwaco, Washington
Website: www.oceanbeachhospital.com
Allworx VoIP Systems: Allworx 48x server (main hospital) and Allworx 6x server (off-campus clinic)
Allworx IP Phones: 151 Allworx 9212L IP phones, and 4 Allworx 9224 IP phones with 12 Allworx Tx 92/24 Expanders
Allworx Advanced Software Options: Allworx Automatic Call Distribution, Allworx Advanced Multi-Site, Allworx Interact™ Professional and Allworx Reach™
