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"A faster, more stable and cost-effective network" for NRS Healthcare
Innovative shift from on-prem to highly-secure hybrid Agile Cloud, with FourNet
NRS Healthcare is one of FourNet’s oldest customers. The healthcare provider has been on a continuous digital transformation journey over the last decade. It’s latest technology upgrade, designed and delivered by FourNet, has been to shift NRS from an on-prem telephony and Enghouse contact centre solution to an innovative hybrid Agile Cloud service, ensuring the longevity of the contact centre with Microsoft Teams as the standardised communications platform across the business.
By replacing MPLS with highly secure SD WAN, NRS is now leveraging a host of additional, cost effective services from FourNet.
Key Statistics
1
Contact centre
19
Locations
1200
Employees
400
Agents
Background
NRS Healthcare is a leading provider of products and services designed to support independent living. The company, with 19 offices across the UK and its headquarters in Leicestershire, supplies a wide range of daily living and disability aids, along with in-house occupational therapy capabilities to help people live independently in their own homes.
It’s a key partner of the NHS and local authorities, and a core part of the business is conducted through its website and 400 agents across various sites.
NRS were using Avaya IP Office and Enghouse Contact Centre on premise. While the functionality was completely fit for purpose for NRS, the virtual infrastructure on which the telephony system and contact centre was sitting was struggling to cope. NRS was also using MPLS to connect their HQ and other sites, which had disadvantages:
- All traffic needed to go through their HQ. This meant there were single points of failure and separate internet circuits were needed.
- Provisioning new sites and winding down sites where the contract had ended was a clunky business.
- There is no agility in MPLS, which is also expensive.
Challenges
NRS worked with FourNet to examine whether Microsoft Teams was the right solution to replace IP Office. The company had used Teams extensively over Covid, and found it helped with remote working as setting up remote users with an on-premise IP Office is complex.
Its decision to standardise Teams as the platform of choice meant that 1,200 employees across multiple locations would be required to be move to one consolidated, integrated system.
The business has also previously invested in one network security solution, but wished to replace that with Fortinet network security in partnership with FourNet, requiring wholesale change.
Benefits
We've got a better, faster, more stable network and a more stable and secure environment and a much more stable telephony platform as well. I don't think we can fault FourNet. The team has been brilliant. They kept on top of everything and sorted out issues, and we would not have a problem working with them again soon.
Steve Johnson,
IT Infrastructure Manager, NRS Healthcare
Our future-proofed hybrid cloud solution provides NRS with a standardised communications platform via Teams at a cost-effective price, with the latest network security from Fortinet, and hosted in our highly secure data centres. As one of FourNet's oldest customers, we're pleased to be continuing our strong business partnership with NRS, upgrading and refreshing their technology when they need it, and ensuring that their systems are safer, resilient and more secure than ever.
James Faircliff,
Account Director, FourNet