Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Omnia VoIP: Omnia Wins VoIP Project at Portland Water District

Omnia VoIP: Omnia Wins VoIP Project at Portland Water District

Portland Water District chooses Omnia Technologies, Inc. to overhaul its voice and data network. A strategic plan has been put into motion to streamline communications and increase customer service at Portland Water District. This strategic plan was designed to assist Portland Water District as it grows as well as identify strategic points of improvement; specifically in areas where customers interact with the Portland Water District Contact Center.

The project will be completed in three phases. As voice quality is only as good as the network it rides on, Omnia will be replacing their current routers and hubs with ADTRAN power over Ethernet switches and routers; this will be completed during the first phase of the project. The second phase will be the installation of the ShoreTel Communications System. Portland Water District liked the ShoreTel system for its ease of management, scalability, and its unique distributed architecture. This architecture gives them a very high level of redundancy across all of their sites.

The ShoreTel Contact Center will be the last phase of the project. The contact center will be a significant step up for Portland Water District. The contact center rides on-top of the ShoreTel architecture and therefore allows contact center agents to be distributed anywhere on their network; this will significantly enhance the availability the agents in the event of a network failure. The IVR (Interactive Voice Response) will give customers the option of speaking with a customer service representative or, by simply entering their account number, they will have access to a "help yourself" menu. From here, customers will have quick access to information such as account balance and next payment due, and they will have the ability to schedule water district personnel for water testing appointments.

Before choosing Omnia, Portland Water District evaluated several vendors and solutions from Cisco, Avaya, and Nortel. The initial reaction to the ShoreTel system was: this is too good to be true. But, with a "live" ShoreTel system on-site for testing and evaluation, Portland Water District concluded that ShoreTel is everything it claims to be; calls to current ShoreTel customers further verified this.


About Portland Water District
The Portland Water District is a century-old company rich in history and experience. That tradition forms a solid foundation for delivering quality products, while forward thinking provides innovative approaches to combat emerging issues within the industry. The Portland Water District (PWD) serves nearly 200,000 people - 47,000 customers - in 11 Greater Portland communities. We deliver water service to Falmouth, Raymond, Scarborough, South Portland, Standish, and provide both water and wastewater service to Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Gorham, Portland, Westbrook, and Windham.

About Omnia Technologies, Inc.
Omnia has been providing expertise in the enterprise voice arena since 1994. Omnia sold its first VoIP system in 2001 has had since become synonymous with IP voice as the "go to" experts in the field. With a customer-centric focus and a commitment to providing the [right] technology to its customers, Omnia is bringing their know-how to a growing geography – we now offer consulting and implementation services to the entire east coast.

Enjoy to talk with VoIP !