WebEx Cloud Calling: The Digital Transformation That Empowered Georgia’s State College and Remote Workforce
Introduction
With a rich history spanning several decades, Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) has established itself as a pillar of education and workforce development in Georgia, overseeing the state’s technical colleges, adult literacy programs, and economic/workforce development initiatives. As a leading force in equipping students with the skills and knowledge necessary to excel in various industries, TCSG offers a wide range of courses and programs in fields such as healthcare, business, technology, and more across its 22 colleges, 88 campuses, and online learning platforms.
Equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and resources, including classrooms, laboratories, and interactive learning spaces, TCSG prides itself on its offering of hands-on, practical learning experiences for all ages.
In part of a cooperative initiative with the Georgia Department of Labor, TCSG joined forces with the Georgia Department of Labor to host the department’s employment services division within its operational framework. This strategic alliance brought approximately 200 new employees from the employment services division into TCSG’s campuses, facilitating a unified approach towards workforce development and training in the state. By integrating the employment services division into TCSG’s operations, the institution was looking to further strengthen its commitment to delivering practical, career-focused education.
The Problem
While TCSG’s systems were sufficient to support the college’s existing employees, the IT team was concerned that the existing communication systems could not support an extra 200 users, particularly those who would be working remotely.
The need for these new employees to have access to voice, messaging, and meetings posed additional challenges, particularly with respect to ensuring the security and reliability of their call centers. Training was also a concern – how could TCSG effectively onboard 200 new employees to a brand new system without missing a call?
The Solution
Hybrid Work – A Solution for Unified Communications
Knowing they needed to scale communications quickly, TCSG sought the help of Byteworks, their long-time IT partner, who recommended WebEx Cloud Calling to replace their on-premise calling systems for their newly expanded call center communications. With WebEx Calling, dispatchers could continue working remotely both on campus or from a remote location of their choice.
Employment services greatly benefited from the powerful cloud calling features such as call merging, call waiting, holding, forwarding, do not disturb, and visual voicemail.
Byteworks provided comprehensive training including hands-on sessions, user guides, and technical remote support, to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform. The training was particularly important since the onboarding process involved 200 people with limited technical experience who needed to be connected to the system quickly.
Byteworks’ support and training allowed TCSG to successfully transition its employees to the Webex App and effectively collaborate, resulting in improved communication, shorter wait times, optimized call handling, and decreased connection times by 30%.
The implementation process took less than a month, focusing on seamless integration and minimal disruption to the college’s operations. And, because WebEx is a cloud-based service, the solution was integrated faster and more efficiently and did not require any changes to any on-premise hardware.
The Impact
The implementation of WebEx Calling impacted the college in many ways, primarily through greater efficiencies. Cloud calling allowed them to streamline their legacy calling processes, resulting in faster service times, reduced costs, and improved service to the employment services department callers.
Even more so, the adoption of WebEx Calling illustrated the forward-thinking ability to handle collaborative efforts with external partners, such as the Department of Labor. The software’s advanced features for collaboration and communication will enable the department to work seamlessly with job seekers, share information and resources, and further support workforce development and training. This will not only improve the college’s reputation but also increase its chances of securing future partnerships and collaborations.
“WebEx Calling really helped simplify what would have been a huge IT/phone system challenge. The cloud services allowed us to easily manage all of the new users, get them up and running with very little training, and gave them so many more features than we had with our on-premise phone system. It was also much more secure, which was a critical piece for the Department of Labor’s employment services department that deals with a lot of personal, private data.”
Conclusion
TCSG faced a significant challenge in accommodating 200 new remote employees from the Georgia Department of Labor’s employment services department, who required advanced communication capabilities to collaborate effectively. Webex Cloud Calling enabled employees to work and field calls from anywhere they chose to work.
The Byteworks solution resulted in improved communication, optimized call handling, and decreased connection times, which ultimately improved customer service as a whole for the employment service department. Thanks to Cloud Calling from WebEx, the college was able to successfully implement a reliable and scalable communication system capable of supporting remote work and collaboration now and into the future.
