Unified Communications Magazine January 2008                                                                                                         Volume 1 / Number 4

The YMCA has a mission to promote social values, help develop future community leaders, and strengthen local neighborhoods through a diverse range of programs and initiatives. The YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, in fact, is the fourth largest charitable organization in the Metro Chicago area. This year, the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago will celebrate its 150th anniversary, a testament to its longevity and the success of its ongoing endeavors, including everything from swimming lessons to gang intervention to family programs and prenatal care and elderly support.

The Metropolitan Chicago YMCA operates 30 primary facilities as part of its 65 overall locations and more than 100 extension sites, through which it serves more than 100,000 members, as well as some half a million Chicagoland residents with its services. These include 21 fitness centers, four year-round residences, seven human service centers, five single-room housing facilities, four senior housing complexes, and one supportive housing facility for young adult males. Indeed, the YMCA plays a crucial role in the lives of countless youths growing up in Chicago, and plans to continue its role for years to come.

The Challenge
However, in order to effectively continue its mission, the YMCA must ensure its infrastructure is conducive to supporting its efforts, which necessarily includes its communications system, which was aging and no longer able to keep pace with a fast-paced 21st century environment. As with many organizations, its communications system consisted of disparate standalone phone systems that not only made maintenance costly and difficult, but did not enable the kind of communications such a dispersed organization needs.

Only two of its main centers were capable of enabling direct dialing to staff, and there were several different voicemail platforms that not only complicated training, but made intra-facility communication highly inefficient. Some centers, in fact, were entirely without voicemail capabilities. Not only did callers need to know the complete phone number, including area code, but because most calls could not be directly routed, they ended up as hand-delivered messages.

"Communication to our centers was difficult for members of the community as well as for employees," said Marc Stiehr, Senior Director of Network Technology at the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. "We needed a better system to enable our centers to more efficiently serve the community. We also needed to find ways to reduce costs."

The problem was obvious: outdated disparate phone systems created an inconsistent communications environment that resulted in steadily rising telecom costs and decreased productivity. In particular, with the facilities spread out among five area codes, inter-office calling costs were exorbitant. The solution, clearly, was to find and deploy a new communications platform that would not only connect all the facilities, but enable reliable communications while lowering costs.

With the realization that they needed a new solution, managers at the YMCA set about their task, contracting Siemens (News - Alert) to conduct a network analysis to determine the best course of action. The testing showed what has by now become obvious to so many organizations - a switch to an IP-based communications network would both reduce costs and dramatically enhance communications opportunities.

The Y Goes VoIP
After evaluating several options from various vendors, the YMCA chose a converged communications solution from Siemens, based on Siemens' open architecture, through which it seeks to enable users to communicate and collaborate effectively, regardless of the device, network, or IT environment they happen to be using.

According to Stiehr, the Siemens solution provided the most costeffective alternative, while allowing for a seamless transition from existing systems. He added that the Siemens HiPath solution also seemed easier to manage than many of the other options he considered.

"I've got a small staff, and we've been able to take over many of the support functions that we couldn't handle in the past," Stiehr explained. "We've been able to manage the entire platform effectively."

To meet its varied communications needs, the YMCA deployed 31 Siemens HiPath 3000 systems at its corporate office and 30 centers, as well as the HiPath Xpresssions unified messaging application, and Siemens' wireless infrastructure as well.

Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY, IMS Magazine, and Unified Communications.

The HiPath 3000 platform offers customers the option of using traditional telephony, VoIP, or a combination of the two, as well as the ability to integrate fax and voicemail on the same system. With this flexibility, the YMCA is able to accommodate all its users now, while still being prepared for future expansion and upgrades thanks to the scalability of the HiPath system. Not only does the HiPath 3000 simplify incoming communications and inter-office calling, it also allows the YMCA to communicate with staff wherever they are with the wireless and mobility features of the system. For users set up with multiple phone numbers, HiPath determines how to route calls to them, with callers having to only dial their one office number - HiPath does the rest.

Having deployed the system, with about 200 users on the system already and growing steadily, YMCA staff immediately acknowledged the benefits of the investment. Staff members were able to be contacted with ease, both internally and by external callers, and the new voicemail system was an immeasurable improvement over the antiquated systems it had been using. In fact, the unified messaging capabilities of HiPath Xpressions were easily integrated with the Lotus Notes application the YMCA uses, standardizing messaging across the organization. In addition, customer service staff was now freed to focus on other efforts, no longer having to constantly monitor the phones and handdeliver messages.

"It's very easy for employees, as they become more mobile, to use the system and access their messages, emails, and faxes from wherever they are and on any type of device," said Stiehr. "We're finding that people are responding very well to it; they love the fact that they can get all of their communications very easily and manage it all effortlessly."

Y-erless
Among the added benefits of the HiPath system is the ability to add wireless communications to the network, through the deployment of the HiPath Wireless Controller and Access Points. With more and more staff and members using wireless devices, it was infinitely beneficial for the YMCA to incorporate WLAN communications as part of its deployment, providing more convenient access to email and other features, not to mention being able to minimize the costs involved with providing wired access in all parts of its facilities.

Currently, wireless access is available in 14 of its centers, thanks to more than 100 HiPath wireless APs and C100 Controllers - with additional coverage already being planned. The HiPath Wireless Manager provides the intuitive management features that simplify management of the wireless network, which is also aided by the HiPath Wireless Convergence (News - Alert) Software, which provides a web-based interface for each controller. The WLAN management software enables QoS and security features, allowing different levels of access to be defined for different user classes.

In addition to providing general wireless access, the WLAN also supports the many self-service kiosks in the YMCA's facilities, which allow members to register for programs, pay bills, make donations, and perform other tasks. This again frees customer service staff to handle other concerns, since customers are able to perform these tasks on their own, and, importantly, without having to wait in long lines during registration periods. In fact, because they are connected wirelessly, the kiosks can be moved to different areas for special events.

"The HiPath Wireless solution is a perfect fit for us," Stiehr said. "Each of our centers has a completely different configuration, and the Siemens solution gives us maximum flexibility to install devices wherever and whenever we wish."

A Worthwhile Investment Having immediately recognized the benefits of the new HiPath solution to both staff and the community, thanks to finally having a reliable, standardized, scalable communications infrastructure that reduced maintenance costs, enhanced productivity, and enabled greater collaboration, the YMCA conducted an ROI study on its new network.

Based on the study, the organization predicts the system will pay for itself within five years, largely due to the significant cost savings it is already realizing, as well as from reduced management and maintenance costs. For instance, the savings from switching to VoIP allowed for the elimination of 250 traditional phone lines, resulting in a $60,000 savings each year, in addition to the significantly reduced long distance calling costs, which had averaged $38,000. In total, the YMCA says it will save more than $1 million over the five years.

Thanks not only to the HiPath infrastructure, but also the assistance Siemens provided in renegotiating vendor contracts, the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago is now able to improve the level of service it provides to the local community. No longer suffering from unreliable communications and growing telecom costs, the organization is now able to further focus its efforts on serving Metro Chicago residents, providing the facilities and services to help both the young and old.