Cultivating lasting community relationships with 8x8

Business overview

Nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, the City of Campbell is home to over 40,000 residents and a wide range of businesses, from family run shops to corporate enterprises. Campbell is like a “collection of neighborhoods,” says Mayor Liz Gibbons, “with a strong sense of shared community and identity.”

To keep this spirit strong, the City makes community engagement a top priority with a goal of being as accessible, responsive, and collaborative as possible. 8x8 provides Campbell with a modern, cloud-based, future-proof solution, allowing the City to better serve the public while controlling costs.

The challenge: a costly, aging legacy system

Most organizations are cost conscious, but public entities like city governments are even more so. How best to spend public funds is a critical decision, and cities want solutions that are both cost effective and long lasting.

Campbell was faced with a twenty-year-old communications system that had become increasingly expensive to maintain. “The technology was seriously outdated, which meant a lot more problems and higher labor costs,” says IT Manager Cecil Lawson. “Also, the system had been acquired by another company who then raised the monthly costs.”

On the operations side, the aging system had become too complex to manage effectively. Says IT Administrator Lee Emerling. “Changes were cumbersome; it was not easy to configure or customize, and some parts would randomly go offline.” The team even had to rely on an outside vendor to make simple changes.

These operational difficulties, coupled with limited, disjointed communications channels, made it even more difficult for city employees to collaborate with residents, businesses, and civic partners, as well as with each other. The tipping point came when the City planned to renovate their offices, which would require costly improvements to the existing communications infrastructure. It was time for a modern solution.

The solution: cloud-based, modern, and future-proof

As it happens, 8x8 moved its offices to Campbell around the time that the City put out a Request for Proposals for a new communications solution. That, plus a casual visit by 8x8’s CTO, put 8x8 immediately on the radar with decision makers. But it was 8x8’s broader reputation and robust capabilities that sealed the deal.

“Checking Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, I could see 8x8’s leadership position in the communications space,” says Lawson. “We wanted a true, born-out-of-the-cloud solution, something that would easily evolve into the future. We also wanted a company that would be still with us decades from now.”

“8x8’s flexibility was an important factor for us,” says City Manager Brian Loventhal. “In a city like Campbell, every department is a little bit different. For example, the Planning Department is very hands on with people needing permits, but finance and HR are internal-facing. 8x8 easily provided communication tools that were tailored for the diverse needs and roles across all our departments.”