INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud

Sam Deckert , Peak Insight Founder and Principal Consultant

McKenzie Aged Care is one of Australia ’ s leading privately-owned aged care and retirement providers , operating 17 nursing homes in Queensland , New South Wales and Victoria . It employs over 2,200 staff , including 120 in central corporate support functions such as finance , HR , procurement , IT and service desk .

The aged care sector is heavily reliant on face-to-face contact in its day-to-day operations . One of the highest priorities is making sure that everyone is contactable at all times , which requires highly available and fault tolerant communications infrastructure .

McKenzie Aged Care deployed a Cisco voice telephony system group wide in 2019 and wanted to layer cloud-based videoconferencing on top to transform the way staff engaged with each other and with the central business support functions .

It also wanted to uplift its project management capabilities , reducing reliance on face-to-face meetings and email , and create specific spaces where project teams could collaborate , co-ordinate , communicate and centrally store all related documentation .

These needs became particularly acute at the start of the pandemic . Support staff were restricted from visiting aged care homes . There was an immediate need to co-ordinate with many stakeholders on crisis calls , liaison with government health officials , and to determine Covid-safe protocols for its homes .

McKenzie Aged Care engaged Peak Insight to assist in the product selection and implementation , and through that process chose Webex by Cisco . Peak Insight was well-known to McKenzie , having previously handled its group wide telephony upgrade . Its professionalism , skill and ability to deliver professional-grade solutions led to its selection for the video conferencing upgrade .

Peter Corrigan , McKenzie Aged Care GM Information and Communications Technology , said : “ We were looking for a video conferencing platform that was stable , reliable and secure , and something that we could leverage with our existing investment in our telephony platform , and that was Webex by Cisco . It ’ s really extended our telephony system to become a true unified communications platform .”

The solution has improved the ability for staff to meet flexibly and to be contactable over video . Staff can now initiate or join video meetings with colleagues from any corporate-issued device .

It has also led to smarter project management practices within the group ,

helping keep projects on track in a challenging operating environment .

“ During the pandemic , our portfolio of projects could have come to a grinding halt . Using Webex by Cisco enabled us to forge on ,” said Sandy Foote , McKenzie ’ s Group PMO Manager . “ It enabled us to communicate across the business quickly and to make better decisions together as a team .”

Webex is expected to enable McKenzie Aged Care to permanently cut its travel budget by two-thirds since more meetings can run online . It is also now being used to enable remote recruitment and onboarding , and to record e-learning content that is used to train staff on upcoming system changes .

Sam Deckert , Peak Insight Founder and Principal Consultant , said : “ Working with McKenzie Aged Care , we understood that they were looking to simplify the complexity of their existing on-premises video conferencing environment by moving to cloud infrastructure and a simplified vendor engagement , having a single vendor that could be relied upon to deliver all of their critical communications needs .” p

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