Australian Girls Choir hits high note with COMVERGENCE infrastructure
Famous for their angelic voices featured in Qantas’ “I Still Call Australia Home” advertising campaign, the Australian Girls Choir wanted to improve the internal phone system at their Australian School of Performing Arts (ASPA) head office in Victoria.
While the office was experiencing surging staff numbers due to the increasing success of the Choir (www.ausgirlschoir.com.au), the limited and ageing phone system was failing to keep pace with the changes, making the organisation’s administration and marketing activities all the more difficult.
Feliana Feliana, IT Manager for ASPA, says the organisation needed a cost-effective and integrated communications solution for the main office as well as bringing their interstate branches onto the same network.
“Previously, we were using a normal Telstra phone line but realised that if we wanted to move forward as we grew, we would need a solution such as VoIP (voice over internet protocol) solution,” says Feliana.
“There used to be only a handful of people in the office and we only needed a few phone lines but since then we’ve grown to 25-30 people. Obviously it’s become more difficult to share phones. VoIP was definitely the way to go.”
To help customise an affordable solution, ASPA engaged SME specialist Comvergence (dev.comvergence.com.au/) to initially implement a telecoms-only system.
Realising the early benefits, ASPA quickly expanded the mandate to an integrated communications system with Comvergence, which included a higher speed internet service with an automatic failover 3G connection which maintains the same static IP address, a dedicated VoIP line and a streamlined IT infrastructure. Comvergence also hosts all of ASPA’s interstate branches on a single Hosted PBX.
Flexibility, efficiency and the convenience that come with a provider small enough to guarantee personal service but with big business expertise was also key to ASPA taking on Comvergence’s customised solution, Feliana says.
“Every time we call the Telstra support line, we get a different person which makes it difficult to resolve our various issues.
“Having the support service with a smaller provider like Comvergence affords a greater interface and personal service, which we find really helpful,” explains Feliana.