Telephony transformation for NHS Trust
Telephony replacement program provides secure communication throughout hospitals for NHS Solent
At a glance
Outcomes
- Replaced on-site legacy telephony system with a fully integrated cloud-hosted solution
- Migrated 6,000+ hospital and office staff to the new system
- Ongoing manageme
Working with Atos to implement intuitive digital workplace services is delivering an enhanced collaboration experience for our teams at Solent NHS Trust, enabling us to provide excellent care to our communities.
Katherine Pinckney
Digital Programme Manager
Client Challenge
Solent NHS Trust is a community and mental health provider, delivering person-centric care from multiple hospitals in the southern region of the UK. At the core of the Trust’s digital strategy is an integrated care system that delivers service excellence for the end-user.
In July 2022, Atos was awarded a three-year contract with Solent to support its IT infrastructure and accelerate its digital journey. As part of this wider transformation initiative, an integral step in the journey was upgrading Solent’s telecom network.
The existing solution was based on legacy on-site telephony systems that were out-of-support and in need of replacement. What Solent needed was a new system that would facilitate more agile ways of working and provide secure communications across the Trust.
Solution
Following collaborative discussions between Atos and Solent, we suggested implementing an end-to-end cloud-hosted MS Teams telephony solution that would replace all legacy telephony systems.
The project covered three critical areas:
- MS Teams was installed on all employee laptops
- Yealink handsets were deployed around the hospitals and integrated with MS Teams to replace the legacy PBX system
- The switchboard and operator consoles in the hospital reception and call centres were also migrated to MS Teams
After smoothly migrating more than 6 000 employees to the new solution, we then worked with Solent to refine their call forwarding plans and policies to ensure that every call would be directed seamlessly to an available line.
Business Benefits
At the conclusion of the project the Trust had a single, unified telephony system serving its employees — everyone from the receptionists on the switchboard to the teams in the hospital call centres.
By deploying a holistic, integrated solution across the full end-to-end process, Solent now has a single support centre for the entire telephony service, rather than multiple vendors managing isolated components. This way, the process is far easier to manage logistically and provides a more seamless and consistent end-user experience for the employees.
Overall, rolling-out MS Teams has also allowed Solent to remove their legacy telephony system, generating cost efficiencies for the Trust and giving them the potential to explore additional functionality in the future.
Why Atos
Atos is an industry-leading expert in delivering digital workplace solutions and has extensive experience in the healthcare sector. We transform services through technological innovation, providing modern, secure and sustainable solutions that help our clients realize their digital ambitions.