Briarwood Baptist Church enhances operations and ministry with Cisco Systems solutions for networking and IP communications.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Briarwood Baptist Church of Cordova, Tennessee faced a challenge common to many small nonprofit organizations: finding an affordable way to take advantage of new technologies for improving communications and employee productivity. The church had a small key telephone system, which did not provide valuable features such as employee voice mail, caller ID, or individual extensions for staff members.
In addition, the key system did not provide automated attendant capabilities; all incoming phone calls were answered by an employee and transferred as needed. Outside of business hours, a simple answering machine received calls.
NETWORK SOLUTION
Based on the recommendation of a church member, Briarwood Baptist replaced its existing telephone system with a Cisco® solution for IP communications. This solution encompasses Cisco CallManager Express for IP telephony services and Cisco Unity® Express, which provides voice mail for employees as well as automated attendant and information services to callers. The existing telephone sets were replaced with Cisco 7900 Series IP Phones. These products connect to an office LAN for voice and data communications, which was created with a Cisco Catalyst® 2950 Switch and a Cisco 2611 multiservice platform for connection to the Internet.
System installation and training services were provided in part by Prosys Information Systems, a Cisco Gold-certified partner and HisCall Telecommunications, a Cisco premier-certified partner.
BUSINESS RESULTS
Since deploying the Cisco solutions, Briarwood Baptist Church has reduced costs, improved its operations, and discovered new ways to serve members and callers. "Churches do not have big budgets, so we need to be especially focused on productivity and cost savings," says John Shamblin, head pastor, Briarwood Baptist Church. "We are saving money on maintenance by using our router with Cisco Unity Express and Cisco CallManager Express to manage our phone system ourselves."
"We are also more productive," he says. "Before we had Cisco Unity Express, our staff had to answer every phone call in person. Now we are able to use the auto-attendant feature to provide directions, service times, and event announcements to callers." Classroom teachers are also using the Cisco IP Communications solution to record weekly attendance information, a capability that was not possible with the previous phone system.
"We are saving money on maintenance by using our router with Cisco Unity Express and Cisco CallManager Express to manage our phone system ourselves. We are also more productive."
-John Shamblin, Head Pastor, Briarwood Baptist Church
ABOUT CISCO CALLMANAGER EXPRESS
Cisco CallManager Express is a solution embedded in Cisco IOS® Software that provides easy and affordable IP telephony capabilities for small businesses and enterprise branch offices. This solution enables the extensive portfolio of Cisco integrated services routers and multiservice access routers to deliver a robust set of telephony features commonly used by business users, while simplifying management, maintenance, and operations, and lowering the total cost of ownership.
Cisco CallManager Express provides the following benefits:
• Cost-effective, converged data and voice communications inside a single, highly reliable platform
• Key system/small private branch exchange features, plus innovative convergence applications such as IP video and integration with customer relationship management systems for up to 240 users
• An intuitive graphical user interface for easy installation, adds, moves, and changes
• Flexible deployment options with Cisco CallManager, Cisco Unity, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Unity Express
• Investment protection for future growth
ABOUT CISCO UNITY EXPRESS
Cisco Unity Express enables small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise branch offices to cost-effectively integrate voice mail and auto-attendant services inside Cisco routers, yielding a lower total cost of ownership and increased employee productivity.
Cisco Unity Express provides the following benefits:
• Affordable messaging and greeting services for increased customer service and rich employee communications
• Intuitive telephone prompts and a graphical user interface for fast, convenient voice mail and auto-attendant administration
• Scalability from 4 to 16 concurrent voice mail or auto-attendant calls and 12 to 120 mailboxes
• Deployment flexibility with Cisco CallManager Express, Cisco CallManager, and Cisco Unity systems
• North American English, European French, European Spanish, and German language support for international sites
