Case Study: Alzheimers Research UK

About Alzheimers Research UK

The Challenge

Being heavily dependent on over the phone donations, Alzheimer’s Research had concerns about their outdated and unreliable phone system. This escalated further with reports of engaged tones and dead lines: they had no idea what calls they were losing, what it was costing, and how many donations they were missing.

With some staff members working from home and some working from their main Cambridge office, these compatibility and reliability issues were being exacerbated causing frustration for staff members and donors alike.

Further to this, with the first few cases of Covid-19 appearing in the UK, it was crucial that Alzheimer’s Research had a reliable, flexible and cost effective solution that would allow them to continue to work throughout a possible lockdown period.

The Solution

Replacing their telephony system was the answer, but the type of telephony solution was the question.

A number of users within Alzheimer’s Research UK had already begun using Teams, but weren’t making the most of the tools available to them. With this in mind, adding and enabling Teams Telephony became the clear solution. However, with their income model riding on the results, Alzheimer’s Research UK needed additional reassurance and the highest of SLAs.

Risc IT solutions’ consultants recommended Teamslink Telephony from Wavenet - an enterprise-grade Teams phone system which is fully-managed and hosted on Wavenet’s dedicated servers. With multi-layered call routing, automated call attendant, and additional features not available with Microsoft’s own calling plans, TeamsLink was the perfect solution.

Alzheimer’s Research rightly undertook due diligence, speaking to existing customers of Risc, and meeting with Wavenet. To demonstrate proof of concept we deployed the solution to a small team, operating alongside their existing system in a hybrid capacity, to unearth any regional issues with call quality and usability. This test ran for a month with the solution working seamlessly.

Whilst there was already a high level of security and best practice across the organisation, Risc IT also helped fine tune security as well as enable a foundation of controls to ensure users would follow best practice.

Just before switch over date, a tailored training package was delivered so users had hands on experience of the system and were confident with its functionality.

The Results

With the onset of Covid-19 coupled with a failing system, the current situation for Alzheimer’s Research UK could have been completely different. They could have ended up with 1 person trying to answer 20 calls simultaneously from the main number and having to manually divert all calls.

With Risc IT and TeamsLink from Wavenet, Alzheimer’s Research UK have moved to working from home with total ease. This is aided by the granularity of reporting in Teams: they can now see how many calls they have taken and their most popular times. Most importantly, there’s no limit to simultaneous calls so engaged tones, dead lines, and missed donations are a thing of the past.

We’re proud to have helped Alzheimer’s Research. In just six weeks we provided a platform and firm foundation for future success.

“We recently rolled out Microsoft Teams with voice across the organisation. The technology has enabled flexibility and reliability that we simply didn’t have with previous products. In our current climate, this has ensured our entire workforce have been able to make the transition to homeworking with ease. Thanks to Risc IT Solutions’ project management, including an internal communications plan and training materials, coupled with their thorough onsite training, it made the rollout of Teams seamless and ensured our employees were well informed on how best to utilise the technology. This has enabled us to communicate and collaborate more effectively and will further enable Alzheimer’s Research UK to work towards our mission” - Head of IT, Alzheimer's Reaserch UK.