Abzorb Systems Ltd – NEC Univerge Blue

Abzorb proposes the NEC Univerge Blue Cloud Telephony platform.  NEC’s Voice Cloud network delivers 99.999% (five nines) uptime for voice services. Abzorb/NEC supports the 99.999% uptime guarantee with a financially backed Service Level Agreement. 

The network’s highly redundant design is geographically dispersed, using stateless soft switches, SBC clusters, and application resource pools that are deployed in multiple groups. This provides reliable and redundant service availability to our customers regardless of endpoint capability.  The Cloud infrastructure and architecture of the solution, allows Customer Tenants to scale into the tens of thousands of users.

The NEC Univerge Blue platform provides a single user interface for management of Voice calls, call history, voicemail, chat (if enabled), online meetings, File sharing (if enabled), hunt groups and contact centre. Omni-contact centre agents and supervisors are also integrated into the same single application.

The unified approach supports the wide variety of roles that exist within the University and the straightforward interface allows new starters to get to work straight away, without a complex learning process.  For any user on the platform, calls can be delivered to SIP terminals, desktop application (MacOS or Windows), smartphone application (iOS or Android) or any teams client. 

Key features on the desktop application include:

• place and receive calls using your business phone number from your desktop or mobile device – allowing busy receptionists to manage multiple calls coming in, using a single desktop interface
• seamlessly flip calls from your desk phone to your mobile device without any interruption allowing staff working both in and out of the practice to continue a call, if they need to leave the surgery
• manage calls (3-way calling, call flip, call park, call transfer) and more allowing receptionists and clinicians to instantly add colleagues to calls
• call recording as standard – provide feedback for users on handling calls with patients and record calls with patients that require further analysis in future.
• sync contacts from Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office 365 and Google across all Univerge Blue CONNECT-enabled devices allowing full integration with the practice’s existing directories.
• view missed calls, transcribed voicemails, and return calls from any device allowing receptionists and practice managers to monitor and manage calls, even when they are not on site.
• view presence of co-workers for collaboration allowing receptionists and clinicians to understand whether their colleagues are busy or can accept a call.
• communicate in real-time with team chat allowing full integration with online chat, if the practice wishes to deploy on their web site

Integration with Teams - Univerge Blue can deliver calls directly to Teams Clients, or a range of SIP terminals, in addition to the softphones described above.  When using the NEC Platform to deliver calls to Teams Clients, the users benefit from all of the features afforded by the NEC platform, whilst still accessing PSTN via their Teams client, including the 99.999% availability Service Level Agreement (SLA), full monitoring and alerting and call recording.

Our platform includes a highly customisable IVR platform. This allows integration with a wide variety of external systems via REST API’s. We can construct efficient call flows, including self-service applications to automate routine tasks with real-time decision making. We have the framework to ability to search for incoming callers, to identify the caller and make decisions based on external influences. This information can be passed to the agent/receptionist who answers the call, so they know immediately who the patient is and even open their record in advance.

We provide a suite of open APIs which have allowed middleware vendors to create integrations with industry specific applications such as EMIS and SystmOne.

Abzorb project managers have many decades of experience between them.  Abzorb will use a dedicated project manager to manage the implementation.  A typical UC project is split into the following workstreams, where a variety of support is provided in each workstream: design, build, test and readiness and go-live.

Design

The support provided in the design phase ensures the new platform is designed to maximise the benefits of the new platform, whilst agreeing the best way to integrate with the legacy platform to deliver as seamless a transition as possible:

Mix of VOIP engineers and legacy PBX engineers to assess existing customer infrastructure and assess integration opportunities. Abzorb has access to a range of engineers (in-house and through a network of partners), who have decades of experience of every major PBX and UC platform.  This allows Abzorb to assess existing configuration, as well as design the best route to build an integration to facilitate a smooth transition with the dual running of old and new platforms.  

The existing voice connectivity will be assessed, to decide the best route to porting of numbers. Abzorb will raise a Pre-Order Validation (POV) request, to ensure it has the correct details when submitting a port request for the existing telephone numbers. 

Build

The support provided in the build phase allows the customer to observe the building of the UC tenant in real-time.  This allows the customer to fully benefit from the customisable nature of the platform:

Lead Installation engineer will build the customer’s UC tenant according to the LLD output. This will include building an integration (usually in the form of a SIP Trunk) with the legacy platform, to ensure calls will route successfully between users during transition. Providing a dedicated engineer, ensures the platform can be built collaboratively with the customer, where customisations to the initial design can be agreed in real-time. 

Test

The test phase allows the customer to be certain the design meets its requirements for the business and user base:

• a pre-pilot will be conducted this is where new users are created on the new platform and are tested against a test script.  Once complete, the SAT is considered complete
• a pilot will then be conducted in this case, a group of live users are transitioned to the new platform and tested against a test script.  Once complete, the UAT is considered complete

Readiness and go-live 

During readiness and go live, the customer can be sure its administrators and end users are trained on the management and calling applications the platform has to offer.

Prior to transition, all administrators will be trained on the system.  This will be in the form of face-to-face and remote (webinar) sessions.  There is no limit to the amount of training provided to administrators and end users.

End users will be trained according to the training plan included in the LLD.  This will be conducted in the most appropriate channel for the user base. Most typically, training is conducted using group-webinar sessions and drop-in sessions. Users who cannot attend one of the training sessions, will have access to view a pre-recorded session.

Handsets and applications will be distributed / installed in a phased approach.  All handsets will be installed by Abzorb’s in-house engineers, who will also provide cabling where the existing infrastructure needs updating. 

Once the applications or handsets have been installed, users will be transitioned in a phased approach.  As each group transitions, calls from the legacy platform are diverted to the user on the new platform.

Once all groups have been transitioned, Abzorb submits the port with the incumbent provider, with the details confirmed from the PoV process.

The service includes a financially-backed 99.999% availability SLA.

Abzorb operates a tier help desk is manned Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, for any customer or user query. Furthermore, a 24/7 out-of-hours service is available to report faults.

Abzorb analyses its SLA performance to guide its operational and ICT development plans. This allows Abzorb to concentrate its resource on the areas that require improved efficiency. Abzorb employs 13 developers full time to deliver these technology improvements and provide assistance to customers who would like to integrate further. 

All customer requests are tracked through the Abzorb CRM system which has been designed and built by Abzorb’s in-house developers. 

Abzorb analyses its entire SLA performance on a consistent basis. This ongoing analysis enables Abzorb to become immediately aware of any SLA breaches and act quickly to resolve them. Should there be any breaches beyond the agreed SLA thresholds, Abzorb can automatically notify customers.

The practice can choose to self-serve its own changes or request them all via Abzorb (with no difference in cost, for either option). There is no cost for any changes to the configuration (actioned remotely), any time within the agreement.