Cisco Unified Communications from NIC Helps Rural Arizona Town

January 24, 2006

The Town of Buckeye, Arizona was founded in 1888, and today this westernmost community of the Valley of the Sun is home to nearly 30,000 people. As Arizona's biggest "small town," Buckeye is located 35 miles west of Phoenix, and its residents enjoy the feeling of a small community. It is, however, one of the fastest growing municipalities in Arizona. It is also the largest, covering 650 square miles. Given the size and number of the master planned developments within the town limits, the population of Buckeye will increase to more than 100,000 by the year 2010.

Like many growing communities, the government offices of Buckeye were expanded as needed. When an office expanded or a new office opened, a phone system was purchased for it. Soon the town had 13 separate sites, each with its own phone system. In order to communicate between buildings, the town had leased lines. A couple of buildings had a Centrex phone system, and a T1 line connected three of the buildings. For instance, if citizens called with a question about their utility bill, they were given another number to call. The town had nine separate phone systems and no four-digit dialing or the ability to transfer calls.

"With the growth that the town is going through, we are constantly adding police substations and fire stations and expanding departments," says Dee Hathaway, Director of IT for the Town of Buckeye. "We knew that three new buildings would be coming online: a public works building, a Community Development Center and a recreation center. I decided that we had had enough of all these separate phone systems and that it was time to unify our communications."

Network Infrastructure Corp (NIC) is a Cisco Gold Channel Partner with specializations in IP communications and VPN/security. It has corporate headquarters and two additional offices in Arizona, as well as an office in Southern California. The company had developed a very successful focus on the public sector and municipalities, and holds a master state contract for public state agencies.

"Buckeye had a town-wide private Wireless WAN infrastructure in place to increase bandwidth and speed for data communications, and to help reduce operating costs," says Brent Graves, senior account manager for NIC. "At the time of deployment, that infrastructure was for data communications only, but if the town ever decided to adopt unified communications, that infrastructure would provide the platform for it."

That time for unified communications came sooner rather than later. With the three new buildings being planned Hathaway thought that the time was right to put in a unified, long-term communications solution.

NIC did a total network assessment of the Town's existing infrastructure and core. Graves and his team wanted to make sure that every option was considered, including the feasibility of linking the existing phone systems together.

"We reviewed several other phone systems, but Cisco® Unified Communications fit in so well with our WAN infrastructure," says Hathaway. "It was a very natural next step, and would provide flexibility, easy moves, adds, and changes. It would also scale to the town's growth, and easily link to any new building or department."

Government budgets being what they are, there was a firm budget that Hathaway had to work within. He says Cisco and NIC both worked hard to make sure that the solution stayed within the Town's budget constraints.

"It was also important to Dee and his team that they be able to manage the new network themselves so that departmental growth and new sites could be easily accommodated," says Graves. "Budget, self-management, and solution flexibility are very common goals for local governments looking at new technology solutions."

The final recommendation from NIC included two Cisco Unified CallManager servers, Cisco Unity® for integrated voice messaging, Cisco 2811 Gateways with Cisco Unified Survivable Remote Site Telephony for each site, Cisco ISR routers and switches, and a total of 200 Cisco Unified IP Phones 7940G and 7960G throughout the town government's 14 locations. The system provides security via IP cameras placed at critical sites such as the city's police station and the airport, and plans are in place to expand this video surveillance program to the new community center when it opens. Graves, along with Dave Phillips, IS manager at NIC, also has the town's growth in mind, and will recommend new technology, such as mobile communications, when the town is ready for it.

NIC offered two sets of training on Cisco Unified Communications to the town employees: one training session was for Hathaway's IT group so that they were comfortable administering the system, and a second session was held to teach every town employee how to use their new phones and its features.

"The previous systems were very limited and did not include many common features found on newer systems," says Phillips. "They really appreciated being able to better serve people by transferring or forwarding calls, or easily setting up conference calls to confer with another office."

With Cisco Unified Communications deployed by NIC, citizens of the Town of Buckeye are now calling one number, their call is answered, and they are easily transferred to the correct department. If no one is available, a voicemail can be left for every town worker. Town employees are enjoying the benefits of unified messaging and picking up all their messages on e-mail. Moves, adds, and changes, which used to cost the town $90,000 a year and force long wait periods to open a new location, are now handled quickly and easily by Hathaway's staff.

In order to further enhance communications for the Town, NIC is currently in the process of designing and implementing a Cisco Unified Contact Center and IVR solution for the Town. Empowering customers once they reach the Town's contact center is another way to improve overall satisfaction and the contact experience in general, and Cisco Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Integration capabilities are designed with that in mind. Customers can use voice commands to navigate to the correct extension or department, listen to information about their specific product or service, understand wait times, and if they like, leave a message. As part of the Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Editions, Cisco IVR Integration helps to empower the customer and provide them with valuable information they want in a timely manner. This solution will further enhance the Town's communication systems and level of response to their customer, the Town residents.

"Many of our customers are in rural areas," says Phillips. "And these municipalities are sometimes left behind from certain technologies. It is very common for us to work with people who have never had voicemail or call forwarding. Big cities take these features for granted, but there is another world out there of smaller, rural municipalities, and they need this technology too. It is exciting to us to be able to provide that for them and see the kinds of improvements that technology can deliver to their organizations."