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Avaya Unified Communications Help Non-Profit Organization Boost Services to Consumers With Disabilities
Carousel Industries Delivers Avaya Aura(TM) Unified Communications Solution to Help Organization Increase Flexibility and Mobility, and Lower Costs
| Source: Avaya Inc.
BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - October 19, 2009) - Avaya, a global leader in enterprise
communications applications, systems, and services, today announced that
Humanim, a Maryland-based non-profit serving individuals with disabilities,
has implemented an Avaya Aura™ unified communications solution to drive
down costs. The new technology also added employee flexibility and business
continuity capabilities and simplified administration of its
telecommunications system.
Humanim is a 38-year-old, not-for-profit organization that provides mental
health, vocational, neuro-rehabilitation, developmental disabilities and
deaf services to children, adolescents, adults and older adults in the
greater Baltimore area. The organization maintains six locations from which
more than 500 office-based, mobile and consultant employees provide
services to the community.
The organization recently purchased the 150-year-old American Brewery
Building in East Baltimore to centralize its on-site services for its
consumers, help provide local jobs and encourage redevelopment in the area.
Seeking a new communications system for the site, the non-profit turned to
Avaya Platinum-certified channel partner, Carousel Industries.
"As a non-profit, we deal with extremely limited budgets. Cost of system
and cost of operations were very important in our decision-making. Avaya
and Carousel Industries were acutely aware of that and sensitive to those
concerns," said Paul Etzler, Network Operations Manager at Humanim. "Avaya
and Carousel delivered innovative ideas that help us lower our costs.
That's money that goes back into supporting the services we offer to our
consumers."
Humanim estimates a savings of more than $5000 per month from the reduced
requirements for copper lines alone with the Avaya Aura solution. In
addition, the organization opted to equip employees with Avaya softphones
integrated with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS), further
reducing capital expenditures while increasing the efficiency and
effectiveness of both office and field staff.
With Avaya Extension to Cellular, Humanim employees gained the ability to
take important phone calls while away from their offices, allowing them to
answer calls from their consumers in real-time and reducing or eliminating
delay when the need to speak with a live person is critical. In addition,
Humanim's field workers now have space in the office with access to their
own phone line -- something they didn't have previously. The new American
Brewery location provides commuter workstations (hoteling) for field staff
that drop in occasionally. With the new technology, employees simply use
their softphone and a USB headset to log into their phone extension at one
of the available desks.
These same technologies help ensure business continuity for the non-profit.
Humanim wanted to ensure that employees could continue to serve the
community even in the face of disaster. Humanim's administrative and
management staff can communicate from home or remote offices if their
primary location is inaccessible. In addition, Avaya's solution is helping
Humanim deliver more personalized services to its clients as it begins to
serve its community from more non-traditional locations.
The new technologies simplify work life for both end-users and IT staff.
The Avaya Aura integration with Microsoft OCS enabled Humanim to eliminate
its inefficient, hard copy phone list system; instead, now staff members
have a quick and easy way to look up contacts, get presence information on
a contact's availability before calling and subsequently, click-to-call
from the same user interface.
For IT staff, the Avaya solution eliminates the need to call outside
consultants to solve issues in the system. Now, the simple, easy-to-use
system has increased the self-sufficiency of its IT staff of three,
enabling them to centrally manage communications for all of its six
locations. As a result, the IT staff travels less between sites and has
more time to devote to other projects that will help support Humanim's
clients.
About Humanim
Humanim was founded in 1971 as a not for profit organization serving
individuals with disabilities. Humanim's mission is to identify those in
greatest need and provide uncompromising human services. Humanim's vision
is that all people in its community (greater Baltimore) have access to the
human services that they need. Humanim has five core service areas: Mental
Health, Vocational, Neuro-Rehabilitation, Developmental Disabilities and
Deaf Services. Services are available to children, adolescents, adults and
older adults. To learn more about Humanim, visit www.humanim.com.
About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company
provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services
directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and
organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya
for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration,
customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit
www.avaya.com.
About Carousel Industries
Carousel Industries is a premier technology solutions provider designing,
implementing and maintaining powerful converged communication networks for
enterprise customers nationwide. Utilizing a single-source approach,
Carousel offers a full range of solutions including IP Telephony, Data
Infrastructure, Unified Communications, Video, Power and Cooling, IVR,
Wireless, Security, Speech Applications and much more. We also provide a
complete range of services from Design Engineering, Installation and
Project Management to Repair, Remote Monitoring, Support Agreements,
Managed Services and Financing. Carousel has achieved elite partner status
with the top technology companies in the world including Avaya, Juniper
Networks, Extreme Networks and Microsoft. For more information visit
www.carouselindustries.com.