SCC accelerates homeworking for 3,000 borough council office users

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a north west borough council needed to enable homeworking the majority of its 3,000 office users ahead of lockdown measures being implemented in the UK. Under the council’s strategic partnership framework with SCC, a 12-month project was already underway to develop a culture of agile working and smart meeting rooms across the council, using Lenovo and Microsoft devices with O365 and Teams. However, with the sudden and urgent requirement to accelerate homeworking on a much larger scale, the council faced a number of key challenges and little time to address them. These challenges included replicating the its telephony system for remote workers and ensuring employees can maintain seamless communication with colleagues and citizens. In the space of three weeks, the council, SCC and Nuvias have worked in partnership to bridge the council’s legacy telephony platform, fully integrating into its Microsoft Teams environment as a primary communications interface using voice, video or chat. As a result, any council DDI or internal call can be received in Microsoft Teams and the user can now call out from Teams using their landline number, internally or externally. The solution will create significant savings for the council by reducing the need for a legacy PABX system and provides a quality integrated user solution using Microsoft Teams suitable for use throughout the COVID-19 lockdown and beyond.