West Thames College

West Thames College is a medium-sized college of further and higher education. Over 6,500 students study at West Thames each year. The College offers a wide range of A Levels and specialist vocational courses up to higher education level and has a reputation for its creative arts courses, especially specialist makeup. The College has two campus locations in the London Borough of Hounslow in the west of Greater London, England. A main campus is located in Isleworth and a smaller Skills Centre in Feltham.

Challenge

West Thames College uses a Cisco telephony network solution. Since many phones are configured to use extension mobility, West Thames staff can log into them and use their personal number wherever they are.

Nevertheless, there are disadvantages to this. Users may forget to log in. Since a username as well as a pin must be entered via the telephone keypad, users sometimes find it too much work or too difficult and therefore do not log in. Also, when employees log off from their computer, it is often forgotten to log off from the phone. In those cases, people may still think they are at their desk. West Thames College IT department searched for a solution to solve these problems.

Solution

RSconnect delivered the Active Login Manager Single Sign-On (SSO) solution to solve this issue. The ALM client can be installed within 30 seconds at a workspace and doesn’t require any administrator or technical skills. After the software is implemented on the laptop or PC, the user can use the desktop telephone immediately after he logged into his pc or laptop. Logging in to the desktop telephone isn’t necessary anymore.

Results

The ALM Single Sign-On solution makes it easy for West Thames staff to use the Cisco desktop telephones. There is no complex login procedure anymore, which highly improves the usability and reachability.

“The Active Login Manager Single Sign-On (SSO) solution has allowed us to introduce hot desk workspaces. Better sharing of equipment has enabled the College to reduce its annual capital investment on hardware and help improve staff office utilisation.” (Michael Michaelides, Executive Director of Resources, West Thames College)