Success Story
WIFO and WSR
TRY NOW
CONTACT
Orientation towards the future connects: WIFO and WSR rely on UNICOPE for telephony
“The UNICOPE team has excelled throughout the project implementation with high competence, flexibility, and its special approach to customer support. The ‘soft facts’ in our collaboration convinced us during the bidding phase and ultimately played a decisive role in awarding the contract, after we were already convinced commercially and functionally.”
Ingo Oberortner, Managing Director, WSR
“The flexibility in using our telephony has greatly increased overall. To familiarize our employees with the numerous new functions and features offered by UNICOPE mobile landline, we plan to conduct a targeted user survey in the next step. This will provide us with valuable feedback for further training after the successful implementation.”
Robert Novotny, Facility Manager WIFO
The Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) is the leading institute for applied empirical economic research in Austria, with strong involvement at the European level. It acts as a central contact point for international organizations such as the EU, OECD, and IMF, as well as rating agencies, regarding national economic development and the assessment of economic policy measures.
In this crucial role, in collaboration with the Economic and Social Sciences Data Centre (WSR) – the IT service provider for WIFO, a forward-looking decision was made in 2020 to transition to state-of-the-art Voice-over-IP-based communication technology. This followed the trend of replacing the traditional ISDN telephone system with modern cloud-based telephony. In the bidding process, UNICOPE emerged as the provider with its mobile landline solution in March 2021.
The old ISDN telephone system that WIFO and WSR shared needed to be replaced. The availability of spare parts was increasingly difficult, as many manufacturers ceased producing ISDN components due to the announced ISDN shutdown.
The primary goal was to find a solution where WIFO and WSR would have no further installation or configuration efforts in the future. This includes both the initial setup and ongoing maintenance and adjustments. WIFO and WSR wanted to be exclusive users of telephony services without having to worry about the deployed components.
There should be a single point of contact for the entire telephony service, and the overall costs should not increase despite transitioning to modern IP-based technology with enhanced functionality.
The project was implemented for a total of 181 extensions at the shared WIFO/WSR location in Arsenal Object 20, 1030 Vienna, including the setup of a test environment and employee training, all completed within a few weeks. A dedicated network with an internet connection and firewall was deliberately established for the new telephony solution to physically separate and decouple telephony and IT data traffic.
Currently, a total of 160 extensions are in use. Flexible addition and removal of extensions are possible at any time and have already been required. Relocating telephone devices, which used to be cumbersome and time-consuming, can now be accomplished by simply plugging and unplugging them.
Implemented Products and Services:
WIFO and WSR are now pure telephony users. Desktop phones can be easily relocated (plug and play). For any further requirements, UNICOPE is available as the contact. Despite increased functionality, more features, and individual solutions, the costs for telephony have not increased.
In addition to transitioning to new, modern desktop devices, the majority of users were equipped with various softphone applications, enabling them to be reachable through their extensions from anywhere. This especially supported WIFO and WSR during remote work, which became necessary for many during the lockdown phases of the pandemic. Previously, employees forwarded calls from the company landline to their personal mobile phones when they were on the go. Caller ID, call back from the company network, or transparency regarding colleagues’ availability were not possible in such scenarios. With the UNICOPE mobile landline app on their mobile phones, this is no longer a problem.
Due to the pandemic, employee training was conducted through a tailored video conference-based training concept for WIFO and WSR, including recorded sessions for on-demand access.
