IPcelerate.com

Customer: University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC)

About the Customer

UMKC is one of four primary campuses within the University of Missouri system and serves more than 14,400 students in three primary educational areas of health sciences, performing arts and urban issues. UMKC employs over 3,000 people on its two campuses of Volker and Hospital Hill. There are approximately 3,500 phones at UMKC, 900 of which are VoIP. This includes the new Health Sciences Building which opened in August 2007 and is a complete VoIP building.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

UMKC began transitioning to VoIP in 2000 when they opened a small remote campus with approximately 9 classrooms. The initial expectation was purely economic – deploying VoIP was half the cost of expanding their current PBX system. Once installed, their expectations grew as they realized that VoIP was easier to maintain and upgrade in addition to being more cost effective. In 2001-02, VoIP was rolled out to the Information Services Department and a plan to migrate the entire campus was initiated. As more departments and buildings were migrated, a better appreciation of VoIP business solutions was realized, and IPcelerate’s IPsession server was installed in 2007 to manage 911 notification.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

UMKC is a growing campus, with departments and personnel constantly moving to different areas or new buildings. Departments are put in temporary quarters while new construction is occurring, and personnel are moved from desk to desk as departments grow. As people moved, their phones needed to move with them, and the Information Services department was challenged in keeping pace. Often this resulted in costly time delays and expensive end-user department changes, as extensions were moved and reestablished. VoIP effectively eliminated this problem as personnel could now carry their phones to their new location, plug them in, and their extension would remain the same. This migration to VoIP solved a time and resource management challenge for the IS department and eliminated IS expenses for each department, but it created a new business challenge in its place – 911 location identification.

The University needed to find a new way to identify the location of a 911 caller. With personnel moving their own phones, it was no longer possible to accurately identify the location of the caller just by the extension number. This posed a serious problem if the person calling was incapacitated and could not provide information on his/her location. Information Services selected IPcelerate to solve the challenge of identifying the location of the 911 call and managing automatic notifications to key personnel.

IPcelerate Solutions

IPcelerate’s 911 notification solution was deployed in 2007, during the roll-out of the new Health Sciences building. With IPcelerate’s solution, it became an easy process for personnel to update their own phone’s location and address whenever it was moved. More importantly, response time to an emergency situation improved with automatic notification messaging sent out whenever 911was dialed from a VoIP phone.

Once a 911 call is made, the phone rings in the campus police dispatcher’s office. Alerts are sent to specifically identified IP phones, and messages are sent to pagers for all on-duty officers and the manager of network services. There are now more personnel notified of a 911 call and its location, resulting in faster response time and more effective emergency management.

New Telephony Experience

VoIP technology has opened the door for a new telephony experience at UMKC, as well as the other campuses in the University’s system. The IS department is actively reviewing additional business challenges to solve utilizing IP telephony and IPcelerate, as they understand the difference between their old phones and the dynamic business experience offered by the new VoIP phones.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

UMKC plans to finish their VoIP migration within the next two years, and other campuses are making the migration as well. The Science & Technology campus of 8,000 students in Rolla, MO migrated from the city’s PBX system to VoIP, and sharing technologies across campuses is being discussed. UMKC is currently investigating IPcelerate’s Timeclock solution for Custodial Services and several hundred student lab assistants. In addition, the Information Services department is interested in participating in an Application Discovery Workshop with IPcelerate to explore solutions which tie into school databases in order to streamline processes, increase productivity and impact their ROI, as well as integrating these solutions into personalized dashboards on their VoIP phones.