Helping Oxfam to become one voice

A world leading, non-government organisation for human relief services, Oxfam is currently on a mission to create a ‘One Agency, One Network’ information strategy.

According to Grant Holton-Picard, Oxfam Australia’s information system manager, improved communications is part of this goal which also supports Oxfam’s vision to create a fair world in which people control their own lives, their basic rights are achieved and the environment is sustained.

Holton-Picard said: “The need for a new communications network came about in the first instance because we were moving buildings and the current system was not meeting our growing needs. The system was at capacity and required extensive work in order to upgrade and meet our ongoing needs.”
The system was a stand-alone PBX solution, with no connectivity between sites and no integration with the rest of the data network infrastructure or systems.

“End-users found the system cumbersome to use, IT found it difficult to maintain. Simple tasks such as moves and changes took large amounts of time or had to be outsourced.”

Being an international organisation, Oxfam Australia communicates regularly with overseas staff, partners and affiliates and spends substantial amounts on voice calls. “With third-party providers for the provision of audio conference services, staff were starting to use free peer-to-peer services to cut down on these costs. This raised security concerns in the IT section.”

As a result, the organisation began looking at either upgrading the existing system or replacing it with a new system. Cisco came to the rescue, offering a substantial in-kind donation to make the leap to a fully fledged Unified IP telephony solution.

A unified system
Oxfam implemented a Cisco Unified Call Manager 5.1-based solution including the following applications: Unity Connection 1.2; Unified Contact Centre Express 4.5; Meeting Place Express 1.1; Unified Presence Server 1.0; Cisco Unified Management Bundle and Arc Connect Enterprise Server. A mixture of IP phones was also used, and the system is fully integrated with its Active Directory environment which, when completed, will operate across Oxfam’s Wide Area Network with Least Cost Routing enabled.

The new solution provides unified data and IPT hardware and services to Oxfam Australia staff in the national, state and field offices, as well as to roaming users, such as staff working from home.

Essential IT for business
Staff and volunteers in all Oxfam Australia offices in Australia and overseas are benefiting. In Australia it has more than 220 staff working in offices in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and its national office in Melbourne. Annually 1200 volunteers support the organisation’s work in Australia.

“The 200-plus Oxfam Australia field office staff in our 11 international field offices will also benefit from improved communication systems.
“Staff in all offices use and share a variety of IT applications for their everyday work. These vary from supporter/donor databases, financial management programs to resources sharing tools such as the intranet. These applications allow Oxfam to ensure our poverty alleviation and social justice programs are as effective as possible.

“Oxfam believes the installed system will be particularly useful and essential in ensuring that the organisation responds efficiently in future emergencies, be they natural disasters or conflicts,” Holton-Picard said.

Improvement in operations
The full implementation is a staged process, said Holton-Picard. “We expect stage one to be completed by the end of July. Stage two should be completed by the end of August with stage three likely to be completed by early 2008.”
As it is so early in the deployment he said it isn’t possible to gauge many of the benefits expected. “Nonetheless, we are already seeing marked improvement in the ability of IT staff to make moves and changes of phones in head office
with little fuss.

“Reception staff are very satisfied with the Arc Console. Staff in general are finding the new system much easier to use.

“When the remote sites begin to come on line, and we can start to use some of the conferencing facilities, we will really begin to see the benefits of the new system.”

Some of the key benefits of the Cisco data and voice solution, the organisation said, include: convergence between data and voice networks; improved collaboration; enhanced communication; day-to-day administration; supporter relations enhancement and reduced costs.

“While there will be increases in some cost areas to support the proposed solution, there will be a decrease in ongoing costs in other areas as well as less measurable savings to the agency,” noted Holton-Picard.

Challenges ahead
There are still numerous features of the new system yet to be implemented. “This will take time and effort from IT staff to ensure that all the benefits are realised,” said Holton-Picard. “With the ongoing support of Cisco and Commander we are confident that this will be done in the near future.”

Oxfam’s new Contact Centre application became operational this month. “This will require a lot of training and fine tuning as it’s a whole new way of working for our Contact Centre staff and volunteers.”

Lessons learnt“The one major lesson we have learnt so far is not to try to achieve too much in one go,” Holton-Picard continued. “Planning and testing is paramount and training of end-users is essential. If we had tried to push out the entire stage one project in one go and expect staff to absorb it all, we are sure it would have ended in failure.”

Commander has been tailoring business communications and technology solutions to meet Australia’s business needs for more than 25 years, beginning with office telephone systems and now complete business communications and technology solutions.

Solutions span office and mobile telephony, IT hardware and software, Internet and network access, converged solutions, support and maintenance services and software licensing. In 2006, Commander and Volante joined forces, introducing infrastructure solutions, software solutions, strategic consulting services and Volante Managed Services to the portfolio.
A Cisco Gold Certified Partner, Commander has had previous experience of working in the not-for-profit sector so was aware of the issues faced by Oxfam Australia.

“Like many charities, Oxfam was acutely aware of the need to change with the times in the way that it communicates between its national, state and field offices,’ said Steve Evans, Commander Group general manager, Enterprise.

In with the new
The new Melbourne head office in Carlton was opened on 1June, 2007 by Victorian premier, the Right Hon. Steve Bracks.

“This provided the opportunity for Oxfam to get rid of the old Alcatel PBX phone system, which basically just provided a dial tone, and start afresh, with a new up-to-date solution,” said Evans.

“Given that this was to be the start of a long journey, we wanted to install a relatively standard system, which could be easily built upon if required,” he said. “This is why we chose a VoIP system on which call centre applications can be attached to.”

The Cisco Unified Communications solution was selected and includes IP telephony. The equipment was donated to Oxfam through Cisco as part of the vendor’s ANZ Civic Council.

Commander deployed the implementation over a centralised network with the aim of providing a world-class call processing, voicemail, voice and web offering.

Reducing network costs “We worked very closely with Cisco to design a premium IP solution for them which will both reduce network costs and improve overall productivity,” said Evans. “The Cisco system perfectly fits Oxfam’s needs.”

The project was deployed over an IP-based network based on a Cisco 2851 Integrated Services Router at the Carlton office.

Overcoming challenges“A turnkey solution such as this is certainly complex, especially in this environment — there is a vast amount of both inbound and outbound traffic.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that these projects are always completely stress-free, however I am pleased to report that there were no problems out of the ordinary with this project. We even managed to provide it completely within the four- to six-week timeframe, for the 1 June opening of the new building.”

“Ultimately around 40 sites around the country are set to have the same technology,” said Evans.

“Staff in general are finding the new system much easier to use.”

By Louise Durack