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Case Study: New Testament Church of God

Introduction

Founded in 1952, The New Testament Church of God (NTCG) is incorporated as a charitable organisation and has recently moved into a new headquarters in Northampton. From this location the Church offers and coordinates educational, evangelical and project-based activities for its youth, ladies and men’s divisions via a country-wide network of 108 local churches and 22 missions. In total the NTCG serves a congregation of over 30,000 followers, 13,000 of which are church members.

The organisational challenges – Wanted to improve communication between sites and accessibility of ministers with the national office based in Northampton. A desire to reduce call & maintenance costs & introduce new phone-based services

The church prides itself on being an organisation that is open and accessible to all its members. For example, the Church actively encourages its congregation to contact their local auxiliary leadership, minister, church or mission if they need information on local church programmes, religious, spiritual, educational or personal issues; likewise there is a high level of internal daily contact between the local churches administration, the 25 districts churches and the national head office. The church/charity operates a central Government and provide a centralised administration for its network of churches nationally.  In a network this large, missed calls, unavailability, engaged tones can all lead to frustration and needless call backs.  In addition, each site has the expense of its own phone line.

In April 2008, a move to new Headquarters presented the Church with an opportunity to address this issue and promote a strategy that would use technology to improve its operational communications efficiency and drive down its costs.  To achieve this NTCG completely reviewed its telephony and communications requirements.  It drew up a detailed specification of the benefits that a new unified communications solution would need to deliver.  These included the ability to manage the entire telephony network as a single entity and from a central point.  This strategy would maximise the use of IP based technology to achieve a massive reduction in line and calling costs, and allow convergence of all Church ministers, regardless of their location on to a single communications network.  

NTCG National Secretary & Treasurer, The Reverend Louis McLeod explains the problem, “We realised that our traditional telephony system could not allow the closer integration of all church branches, deliver the increase in efficiency and functionality we wanted, or allow us to introduce new phone-based services for our local church administration, our members and followers.  Now was the time to investigate the latest communications technology on the market.”

He continues, “As we have no in-house IT expertise it was vital that we selected a system that was totally reliable and required minimal on-going maintenance and configuration.”

New Testament Church turns to Swyx

The Solution - A software-based Unified Communications solution.

NTCG undertook a comprehensive evaluation of three potential systems, two of which were IP telephony solutions.  According to Reverend McLeod, an offering from Swyx, a specialist in software-based ‘pure’ IP telephony solutions, proposed by authorised reseller Shiva Technology Limited, created the biggest buzz within the assessment team. 

McLeod explains the selection decision, “The SwyxWare product was the only communications solution that was based purely on IP and therefore could be integrated directly into our servers located at our head office.  Our only reservation, was that our organisation has previously taken a very conservative approach to deploying new technology, therefore to make the shift from a tried and trusted, albeit limited system to a converged IP environment needed a leap of faith on our part.  However, I had no reservations about Shiva’s technical and professional ability and ultimately we were convinced that SwyxWare would achieve the functionality, reliability and simplicity of operation we were after and provide a technology foundation from which a range of more advanced features could be implemented at a later date.”

The Results – An easy to manage telephony infrastructure that has reduced the operating costs, made head office staff, ministers and key personnel more available to members and the general public.

According to McLeod the implementation has achieved all the criteria set out by the Church and has the potential to deliver further cost and operational benefits in the future. “The Swyx solution has been a great success.  The implementation was achieved within our timelines, and after some initial training sessions the staff have become very comfortable with using the new technology and are starting to fully exploit the system’s functionality. To prove the system’s ability to connect with other sites, Shiva first integrated our Education Centre based a few miles away from our headquarters.  Previously this was on a separate number, but is now on the same system so that all calls can be seamlessly transferred between the two buildings. And of course all the calls are now free!”

McLeod adds, “This provided the confidence we needed to embark on our plan to integrate all our churches and missions. We would like to roll out SwyxWare to our 25 district churches and eventually to all 108 locations, with the district churches acting as hubs and providing local support to the branches.  We anticipate that the improved communications the system offers for an individual branch church , will foster much closer communication with other local churches, their community and head office improving accessibility to members everywhere.  Our initial calculations also predict major financial benefits for the Church such as major cost reductions on line rental across the organisation.  Already we have seen our costs at head office drop by over 50%.”

McLeod continues, “We are currently investigating the possibility of migrating our in-house telephone directory from an expensive paper-based directory to Microsoft Outlook. This will not only save on printing costs, but it will enable our users to dial any number instantly from their telephone or computer. Furthermore, we are progressing plans for the introduction of brand new telephone services, for example counselling, fund-raising, and income generation, which the system makes feasible for the first time.  It is a clear case of technology allowing an organisation to move forward and innovate.”

According to McLeod these are the key benefits the new system has delivered:

  • Significantly reduced the overall telecommunications costs as the Church no longer needs to pay for multiple line rental and traditional system service/maintenance charges
  • ‘Never miss a call’ – call recording for messages and electronic filing of voice mails, voicemail/email integration.
  • All churches and missions will become integrated into a single NTCG network significantly reducing costs (free calls between sites) and improving inter-church communication.
  • IVR (interactive voice response) has removed the need for a receptionist at head office
  • New telephony-based fund-raising services can be introduced

McLeod concludes, “Even at this early stage we are realising significant benefits from deploying Swyx unified communications.  We are now looking at other functionality within Swyx that will deliver additional benefits. For example, we are considering the adoption of SwyxMobile which allows Swyx’s softphone on any mobile device, thereby reducing our mobile phone bills and improving the availability of remote and travelling staff.  We also want to explore extending the system to ministers’ homes, from where they carry out much of their valuable pastoral work.  And we are also aware that the system offers the potential of secure and controlled Instant Messaging across the whole of NTCG.  We will be investigating these features in the coming months.”