News & Information

Telenomics Does it Again with PwareWeb
Coast Community College Success Story

Telenomics is pleased to announce the addition of the Coast Community College District (CCCD) into our PwareWeb family. We've once again replaced a leading competitors PC based Call Accounting System with PwareWeb. In doing such, we gained another satisfied customer willing to share their experience with our PwareWeb implementation and after sale customer support.

The Coast Community College District, the fifth largest in the nation in credit enrollment, comprises Coastline Community College headquartered in Fountain Valley, Golden West College and KOCE TV (PBS) located in Huntington Beach, and Orange Coast College located in Costa Mesa. The District Administrative Offices are located in Costa Mesa. The three colleges enroll more than 57,000 students each semester in more than 100 degree and certificate programs. Other District organizations include Coast Learning Systems, and Coastal County Regional One-Stop Center

The Orange Coast Community College District Network
The CCCD network is comprised of eight PBX locations, all which require Call Accounting System (CAS) management. The PBX's are from Lucent Technologies (now sold through Avaya). They have a LAN in place between all locations with the main PBX receiving calls from the outlying PBX's which in turn routes the outgoing LD calls.

The CCCD specifications included call reconciliation for the various PBX's, summarizing the call traffic between the seven remote locations terminating through the main / central PBX to the outside. The selected CAS is to only report the final outgoing call(s) from the central PBX into the CAS modules.

Telenomics was one of several CAS being investigated from the prior year when the decision was made to replace the existing CAS vendor. CCCD felt that the existing system had its problems, was hard to manage and even harder to count on for their required customer support activity. The changing of vendors had been in the works for some time beginning in early 2000.

Having dealt with this existing CAS vendor over the past few years, CCCD felt they had a pretty good handle on what their current system provided as far as capabilities and limitations. They knew both what they wanted and what they didn't want in a new system and a new vendor. The search began.

The Sales Cycle
The actual process of selecting a CAS vendor took well over a year. The idea of having a central data base, with web reporting features, utilizing network buffering over the existing LAN with TCP/ip was very appealing. The web demo Telenomics presented was also appealing and looked really easy to use compared with what CCCD had been through before. However seeing only one system that really impressed them was not enough. They decided to look at several vendors and do a thorough job of due diligences before committing their resources to another vendor.

The Challenge
CCCD decided they really liked the PwareWeb approach. However, there were some custom requirements that needed to be built into the system such as changes to the PwareWeb On-line Directory, plus they required three new summary reports and customized description fields. The PBX's reconciliation and call reporting selection were also going to have to be part of the requirements to fit the CCCD environment.

If Telenomics committed to the CCCD requirements, they needed to do it in the agreed upon budget without coming back and asking for more funds that was allocated to the project. They also needed to complete the requirements in a specified timeframe.

On-Going Vendor Support
The on-going customer support after the sale was also still a very major concern at CCCD. Regardless of which systems were installed the support issue was still on the top of the requirements list.

If Telenomics was awarded the project, could they deliver what they promised and what would the relationship be after the system was installed and paid for. Having gone through a CAS vendor before helped prepare CCCD in what to look for and what to stay away from. It was a process they didn't want to have to do again in the foreseeable future, so selecting the correct vendor was very important to them. The items of concerns were put into the software contract and also outlined in the implementation plan.

The New Web System
The Telenomics Web System began implementation at CCCD in the fall of 2001. One of the first items of business was to install the network buffers at the eight PBX sites and bring the data together into the central data base at Orange Coast College. Within a week of the initial implementation, CCCD began seeing call report data over their web as promised.

According to Richard Patterson, the Telecommunications Director for CCCD, Telenomics really stepped to the plate and did what they said they would do. When issues came up, we simply worked through them together. The relationship has done nothing but strengthened since the implementation was completed. We're quite satisfied with our choice of vendors. What's even more amazing, they even came in under budget. That doesn't happen too often with software vendors.

Michelle Neal in Telecommunications is the one who really runs the central system at CCCD, and here's what she had to say when asked for a quote on this article:

The Telenomics PwareWeb System was easy to learn and is very user friendly. The staff at Telenomics has been extremely helpful and pleasant to work with, plus they've taken care of all our issues in a timely and professional manner. Converting to the system has increased productivity for us with easier access, data entry and an organized format which to work with. Based on the way they built the system, support issues are less than what we were previously use to. We were pleased with our choice and would recommend them in the future.

Closing Statement from Telenomics
The CCCD account was important to us. In fact, all of our installed base customers are very important to us. We've been installing CAS since 1983 with a majority of our original customers are still with us. Not only are of proud of this, we have fun in doing it.

Story by Rick Hupe, Telenomics
April 2002