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Overwhelmed by the RFP Process? Simplify Your Life with Our Sourcewell Contract

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Work for a government, education, or nonprofit agency? You can choose between two options when you’re ready to purchase a communications system — both of which will satisfy your bid requirements:

  1. Request for Proposal (RFP)
  2. Sourcewell Contract Purchasing

Why Do Bid Requirements Exist?

Every publicly funded agency must put projects up for bid to provide companies with equal opportunity to win the agency’s business in a standardized format to ensure fairness. Agencies must also use the bidding process to document how they spend the funds they’re being given. The most common method for doing this has traditionally been an RFP. But depending on your needs, Mitel’s Sourcewell cooperative purchasing contract may be a better alternative.

Though the traditional RFP process was designed with good intentions, it can present some purchasing challenges for government, education, and nonprofit agencies.

First, RFPs can limit the quality of responses you receive (not necessarily the quantity). Responding to RFPs is time-consuming, so it can cause the following:

  • Best agencies choose not to respond.
  • Businesses only respond if they see a significant benefit and/or a high chance of winning the bid.
  • Those that do respond put little energy into their proposal.

Second, and more importantly, this process is very time-consuming for agencies going out to bid. In a standard RFP process, each agency will typically go through the following steps:

  1. Identify potential providers
  2. Develop equipment and service specifications
  3. Create and advertise RFP
  4. Receive responses to RFP
  5. Evaluate proposals
  6. Award lowest bid
  7. Offer a protest period
  8. Have equipment delivered and installed
  9. Review and maintain the contract throughout its term

At a minimum, the RFP process takes three to six months but usually takes six to nine months from RFP build to installation. And even after all that, the way the RFP process is designed means there is no way to guarantee you will get the products or services that best suit your needs. Factors like cheap hardware and contract structuring barely related to your core needs may skew the final decision.

The Sourcewell Alternative

Sourcewell contracts eliminate these RFP challenges. They take the burden of RFPs off government, education, and nonprofit agencies. Sourcewell is a government agency that conducts its own rigorous RFP process and awards a vendor a national contract. Since the RFP work is already done, agencies can purchase communication technology outright through a Sourcewell contract, saving months, words, and uncertainty.

If you’re interested in a Mitel communication system, you’re in luck — Sourcewell has awarded Mitel a communications solutions vendor contract.

The purchasing process and timeline are significantly reduced using Sourcewell cooperative contracts. Instead of the time-consuming, nine-step process listed above, you only need to complete four steps:

  1. Become a member of Sourcewell (if you aren’t already)
  2. Get in contact with TCI to determine your specific phone system needs
  3. Indicate that you want Sourcewell pricing for procurement
  4. Coordinate with TCI for design, installation, and implementation.

Reach out today. We’ll step you through your options. Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 




How Mitel Solutions are Making a Difference in Healthcare, Education and Hospitality… And What’s Next for Telephones?

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Everyday Mitel Phones Make Impacts Around the World

Over the past half-century, Mitel has contributed many “firsts” to the history of telephones, but they aren’t creating all these world-first inventions just for the sake of innovation.

Mitel develops cutting-edge products so its customers can make the crucial connections they need to move the world forward. Here are just a few ways Mitel phones make a difference in Healthcare, Education, and Hospitality every day.

Healthcare

In a healthcare environment, efficient and timely communications can mean the difference between life and death. Mitel phones can be found at nursing stations throughout hospitals around the world.

One feature that sets Mitel’s phones apart for healthcare providers is their large number of programmable keys for one-touch speed dial and other telephony features. Having numerous dedicated buttons to facilitate vital communications is ideal for nursing stations, where quick access to required personnel and departments is crucial.

Providing a clean environment is also paramount in healthcare settings, and Mitel’s pioneering antimicrobial IP desk and cordless phones are ideally suited to maintaining hygiene standards in every workplace.

Education

Effective communications throughout school facilities have become paramount with today’s heightened concern for student and staff safety. Mitel’s phones are found in some of the largest K-12 school districts in America, including Chicago Public Schools and the New York Board of Education.

Mitel phones provide the tools for administrators, students, and teachers to stay connected from the classroom to the front office. Users in education can quickly sign up for classes, log on for virtual learning, and make important calls during emergencies.

Hospitality

Look behind the front desk of most hotels in North America (and elsewhere around the globe), and you’ll find a Mitel phone hard at work. The front desk of any hotel is the critical point of interaction with guests, whether checking in or answering requests for wake-up calls or extra pillows.

Mitel’s console and desk phones have become the workhorse at many hotels worldwide, facilitating excellent customer service by providing practical communications tools for interacting with guests and fulfilling their requests. They’re also doing important work behind the scenes, helping back-office staff keep hotel operations running smoothly.

What’s Next for Telephones?

The ongoing balance of home and office working will drive the evolution of the traditional desk phone. Companies must address the unique challenges of hybrid work and the resulting change to business settings, which continue to develop even now.

“In the future, we can expect to see a focus on driving higher quality audio with more advanced audio codecs and new background noise filtering capabilities,” predicted Peter Couse, Mitel’s Portfolio Manager of Desktop and Wireless Endpoints.

“Interworking with PC-based video collaboration will also become a key aspect of the future phone,” he added. “The phone will look more like a PC peripheral than a standalone communications device.”

Even phones in on-site settings like hospitals, schools, and hotels reflect the shift to a more flexible work style. With multifunctional apps and cloud connectivity, they may function more like our personal devices rather than traditional office hardware.

TCI offers Mitel phones and other technology solutions that improve daily Healthcare, Education, and Hospitality operations. Contact us at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

Focus on K-12 Education… 6 Technology Trends Schools Are Preparing For

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Digital transformation — the rapid evolution of technology to connect people, things, and information — has been a business trend for years. Upon graduating, many high school students will enter a workforce where employees spend more than six hours daily using digital tools to communicate.

To prepare students to thrive in these digital environments, elementary and high schools must embrace digital transformation, passing on benefits to administrators, staffers, and parents. Amid this transformation, schools have several considerations about how digital transformation is altering the educational experience. Here we look at the top six education technology trends your school should prepare for.

1. Increased Parent Interaction with Teachers and Administrators

Parents often have meetings several nights a week with teachers and administrators. Beyond meeting in person, parents look to digital media for important contact from teachers and administrators.

Important messages can get lost when a parent receives 300 or more emails from teachers in a year. Instead, collaboration and communication tools can help parents, teachers, and administrators better communicate in one location using one app for messaging, to-do lists, and even submitting homework.

2. Students Expect More Out of Their Education

The world is becoming increasingly digital, and many school-aged children have known nothing but digital. Even college students can be considered digital natives. If the technology in the traditional classroom isn’t there to facilitate their learning, they have STEM, charter, and private school options that will afford them the technology they need.

Whether offering your on-campus students the technology they need to learn and succeed or providing the technology for massive online open courses and distance learning, a phone system that can support these tools is essential.

3. Staff Can Utilize More Resources

District staffers often look for open educational resources and try to accommodate new curricula like common core. Teachers now turn to YouTube, Google, and other online tools for help.

But they also need more from their communications or PBX systems than “hello, goodbye” functionality, and voicemail being the main application. Today’s communications systems are more evolved than ever, including capabilities like automatic call distribution, hot desking, twinning, reporting, and a range of unified communications applications. Ultimately, teachers have a right to expect that their PBX system will have a wide range of functionality.

4. Legislation Demands Changes

More oversight by state and federal governments often has school districts scrambling to find the money and resources to comply – and that even applies to communications.

It’s a common requirement for your communications system to tell 9-1-1 responders exactly where an emergency phone call is coming from within the building. If it doesn’t, the school district could be liable.

New laws regarding education for children with special needs also require time-sensitive communications and hours of meetings and collaboration. Teachers, therapists, and principals need communications tools that comply with these laws and help them do their jobs.

5. IT Directors Face New Challenges

IT professionals have long dealt with an environment that is rapidly changing. But only recently have those changes made their way into the classroom. Many classes now use Chromebooks, Macs, PCs, Smartboards, and a Wi-Fi infrastructure that allows them to access cloud software, like the G Suite.

They are also expected to provide functional and updated communications software for their districts. But with E-Rate shrinking and eventually going away, administrators and elected officials are looking to do more with less regarding technology and communications. But just as there are grants for student technology, there is also help for IT directors in the form of Sourcewell, which takes the burden of RFPs off of government, education, and nonprofits.

6. People Need to be Notified on a Large Scale

Schools are also expected to communicate minor and significant announcements to large swaths of parents, students, and staff. Emergency alerts, weather alerts, and even schedule reminders or changes can now be communicated from one central district location to any combination of groups that deal with the district. Whether parents need to fill out prom paperwork or students need to know the next football game has been rescheduled, mass notification is essential today.

Digital transformation is changing how students, parents, teachers, and administrators interact. Let’s talk about what’s next for your school’s technology. Contact us: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.