Cisco Works to Make SickKids Foundation’s Network Better

The network and phone system for the largest charitable funder of child health research in Canada—SickKids Foundation—was ailing.

From dropped calls to poor voice quality to unexpected downtime, SickKids Foundation’s phone system was causing a lot of frustration among donors. SickKids Foundation depends on backers to fund their charity and employees realize that donor frustration can turn into donor apathy real quick.

SickKids Foundation called on Cisco to find a solution to their networking ills by refreshing its communication tools. Cisco came up with a plan and used the following products to rebuild the SickKids Foundation’s aging communication network:

Cisco Aironet 3500 Series Access Points with 802.11ac

Cisco 2500 Series Wireless Controllers

Cisco Catalyst 4500, 4500-X and 2960-S Series Switches

Cisco 2900 Series Integrated Services Routers

This hardware along with Cisco software made a world of difference for the SickKids Foundation contact centre agents. Dropped calls and poor voice quality reports have become a thing of the past. These updates have aided the help desk too as trouble shooting and responding to network instability tickets are down 75 percent. This means the IT department can turn their attention to other pressing issues knowing that their call infrastructure is working well

“Previously we received weekly complaints from donors about poor call quality,” says Romaine Hunt, associate director, Donor Services. “Since integrating with Cisco, we have not received any negative feedback and accepting donations on first contact gives us room to take more calls.”

The improved network has gone so well that it’s a part of the reason that SickKids Foundation is able to expand to a second location.

To learn more about the SickKids Foundation solution, please visit the case study page.