These days, virtually all companies are moving through a rapid digital transformation process, accelerated by the challenges of the pandemic. However, the public sector is under exceptionally high pressure to innovate, as failure to do so can have a wide-reaching impact on an entire community.
A unified communication solution capable of synchronising teams and powering productivity is often one of the essential initial investments in any public sector strategy for digital transformation. However, finding and implementing the right solutions can be challenging.
For public sector companies in the non-profit landscape, it's essential to innovate quickly while keeping costs as low as possible. Fortunately, there are plenty of amazing vendors out there to help.
The National Housing Federation, for instance, turned to RingCentral, one of the most prominent market leaders in the cloud communication space, when looking for a cost-effective way to power their newly mobile workforce. Here's what happened when RingCentral and the National Housing Federation joined forces.
Investing in Better Communication for Growing Teams
The National Housing Federation is the crucial voice behind many housing associations spread throughout England. The group is committed to building a country where everyone can live in a high-quality home, where they can afford to pay the bills. The members of the National Housing Federation provide more than 2.5 million homes across the UK to over 6 million people.
Every year, the group invests in a wide range of neighbourhood projects to support and enrich communities while simultaneously looking for ways to make their operations as streamlined and efficient as possible.
In recent years, the National Housing Federation discovered its current communication technologies weren't suitable for a rapidly evolving cloud-based and mobile team. As the group's on-premises phone solution approached the end of its contract, the National Housing Federation decided t was time to upgrade to a solution suitable for a new flexible working environment.
The group had several important factors to consider when choosing the solution to deploy next. According to Kalpesh Sonecha, the Head of ICT for the National Housing Federation, it was important to find something which offered both native mobile support and strong value for money.
The Federation believes IT is the backbone of the service it provides to the community, and without a robust solution, the non-profit group can't thrive. Staff members need to be accessible to customers in all environments, whether they're in the office, travelling or working remotely. At the same time, the group needs to ensure phone systems remain secure and reliable.
Adapting to Mobile and Flexible Work
When the National Housing Federation decided to replace its legacy phone system officially, the ICT team needed to think carefully about the existing communications infrastructure. The group had already introduced flexible working a year prior, which meant only about 60% of staff members were in the office on any given day.
The older phone system required the staff members to be in the office to make and receive calls, which meant that employees on the move had to remember to forward business calls to other numbers when not in the office.
Phasing out this ageing phone system allowed the National Housing Federation to discover new ways of improving and upgrading its operations. The previous solution had also relied on using different vendors and platforms for everything, which led to a highly disjointed ecosystem. When making the new change to the communication landscape, the Federation wanted to unify its technology into a single easy-to-use solution.
