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5 Cloud Benefits You Should Know

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5 Valuable Cloud Benefits You Should Know

Cloud Benefits

1. How you can enable a mobile workforce with cloud communications

We’re all busy today. But we’re not always productive. For example, we spend several hours every week checking emails, schedules, text messages, and voicemails in multiple applications and on multiple devices just to make sure we’re not missing something. But ironically, managing multiple collaboration tools on multiple devices is a sure way to miss something.

Cloud communications opens up and unifies collaboration so businesses begin thinking outside their inboxes.

It brings employees, customers, and partners into the conversation from wherever they are, on whatever device they’re on. And it lets them pick up the conversation quickly, by organizing everything into a single cloud‐based application where voicemails, videos, chats, and more can be stored and easily accessed whenever they’re needed.

The key to better collaboration is through your mobile phone. If you’re like most of us, it’s the first thing you check in the morning, the last thing you see at night, and it goes wherever you go. That’s a far cry from where most legacy phone systems are today, which were designed well before the mobile era and handle mobile communications as an afterthought.

The rise of the mobile workforce has challenged modern perceptions of what a traditional office environment should be.

Gone are the large spaces filled with wall‐to‐wall cubicle farms. Instead, they’ve been replaced with functional work spaces where people collaborate and are more productive, and mobile working, once seen as a major hassle for organizations, is no longer considered a compromise for businesses trying to accommodate unique work situations like flexible working schedules and office closings due to severe weather. Today, everything is digital, and remote employees—equipped with the right communications tools—can be as productive outside the office as they are in the office.

Consider the following mobile workforce trends:

  • Nearly 70 percent of employees use their personal device for email
  • 26 percent of employees are productive while outside the office or home
  • 36 percent of employees use up to three mobile devices to do their work

Cloud communications also means no mobile app gets left behind. Your business apps are integrated into the communications fabric so you can share information, ideas, and images from a single screen without constantly opening and closing apps or worrying about interoperability.

Regardless of how your organization compares with other forward‐looking mobile organizations, your business is constantly moving. Work is done while eating breakfast at home, riding in a car, walking to lunch, sitting in a hotel lobby, or waiting in line at the airport. Your employees work remotely—blasting out emails and text messages, and answering calls from customers and clients (or prospective customers and clients) at all hours of the day and night, whenever and wherever they’re needed—regardless of whether they’re “at work.”

Life is mobile, and your communications system should be too. You should be able to be as productive on your mobile phone as you are at your desk.

2. Supporting multiple locations with cloud communications

In addition to supporting mobile workers from any location, modern business communications systems need to support remote workers from multiple locations. Unlike mobile workers, remote workers perform their work from a fixed location—it’s just not located at your main campus or headquarters. Perhaps it’s a branch office located in another city or country, or a temporary office setup to support a new project, or even a home office for a teleworker.

Regardless of the specific situation, remote workers all have unique communications requirements that are often similar to deskbound workers at your main office location, but without the same resources—equipment, connectivity, and support.

Legacy private branch exchange (PBX) systems are usually cost prohibitive for smaller remote locations consisting of fewer than ten users.

For this reason, remote workers at smaller locations are often equipped with Centrex phone systems, analog lines, or residential phone services that lack the features and functionality of a business communications system. They may also be required to connect to the main office over a virtual private network (VPN) connection, which can negatively impact voice quality.

Cloud communications effectively creates a virtual communications system across all remote locations for an organization, extending the solutions available for both mobile and remote workers, to include:

  • Mobile phones
  • Desk (hard) phones
  • PC (soft) phones
  • Contact center agents

Both on‐premises and cloud communications systems support mobile and remote workers. However, on‐premises systems treat these workers as the exception: Mobile/remote access has to be approved and set up, a VPN or other similar security measures need to be configured, and additional network bandwidth may need to be provisioned (for remote access).

Cloud communications treats office, mobile, and remote workers all the same.

It completely eliminates location from the equation and provides users with the same set of features that they have in the office, regardless of their location.

Learn how 62 local chapters and 27,000 Make-A-Wish volunteers rely on hybrid cloud communications from Mitel to make wishes come true >

3. Reducing costs with cloud communications

Not all dollars cost the same. A dollar invested in a technology project that has a low return on investment (ROI) has opportunity costs that may amount to far more than the initial investment itself. Similarly, many technology projects require ongoing commitments—sunk costs—that further erode profitability for a business: the proverbial “throwing good money after bad.”

Large investments involve risk.

Not only is there a heavy financial stake, but also the organization is essentially placing a series of bets on the investment:

  • Is this the right technology for our business? How will the technology change over the next three, five, and 10 years?
  • Is this the right vendor to partner with for our business? Will they be around in three, five, or 10 years?
  • How quickly will our business grow over the next three, five, and 10 years? Will this investment scale to support that growth?

Capital budgeting is always a very subjective process. A capital expenditure (CapEx) is usually defined by a minimum investment threshold, for example one thousand dollars, and the investment must have a valuable life of more than one year.

CapEx may, in some cases, include bundled equipment, installation and project management costs, implementation services, freight expenses, and initial training costs, among others. Businesses can depreciate a capital investment, typically over a five‐ or seven‐year period, but they must also pay property taxes and maintain fixed asset records on all capital investments throughout the useful life of the investments.

And of course, most technology today is obsolete well before its five‐ or seven‐year depreciation period.

It all gets extremely complicated, extremely quickly.

For these and many other reasons, most businesses prefer operating expenses (OpEx) instead of CapEx. OpEx costs—like utilities, rent, perpetual licensing fees, and software maintenance—are typically lower (in the short term) than CapEx costs. This is particularly true in terms of upfront costs required, which frees up cash for other projects that drive revenue and growth for the business.

OpEx costs are typically more stable and predictable than CapEx costs and provide more flexibility for a business should requirements change.

For example, a service provider will usually charge a known recurring rate for a given level of usage, a per‐user (or per‐seat) fee, or a monthly subscriber fee.

The original thought behind premises‐based communications systems was to keep costs down by owning the solution. But as those systems have aged, businesses find themselves owning the problem of maintaining, upgrading, and expanding those systems.

The cloud offers a better path for growth.

It not only saves you money through economy of scale, but also it scales cost-effectively as you grow. You never have to worry about adding more servers and switches as you add more employees. You simply add another seat in the cloud at a fixed monthly cost and have the assurance that new employees are connected into all of your business communications from day one.

If you’re looking to reduce communications costs, cloud communications can save you money:

  • No costly, upfront investments in servers, switches, and PBXs
  • No budget “surprises” with consistent or predictable calling plans
  • No costly, across‐the‐board software upgrades as new features and versions are released — you get the latest versions immediately, automatically
  • No wasted money on overprovisioned trunks or underutilized hardware
  • No high energy and cooling costs to run a roomful of equipment, and rent to store it all

As part of your ROI analysis, you should compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud‐based and premises‐based communications solutions.

Remember, a cloud‐based solution consists almost entirely of OpEx costs, whereas a premises-based solution requires both CapEx and OpEx (in the form of ongoing software assurance and upgrades).

Learn more about saving money with cloud communications >

4. Focusing on business, not infrastructure

Technology has the ability to transform your business and drive innovation. But it can also drive you crazy if all you’re doing is putting out fires to maintain the status quo. Think of it this way: Would you rather have your engineers fixing the phones or finding new ways to delight your customers?

Cloud‐based communications solutions are exactly that: solutions. Fixing bugs and repairing hardware are the cloud provider’s problems, and most of them make sure it never becomes a problem for their customers—even going so far as to guarantee systems uptime and availability in their service level agreements (SLAs).

While you never have to worry about losing dial tone, your IT department can focus on making sure you don’t lose your competitive edge in the market.

Innovation is the key to continued growth in today’s business environment. Cloud‐based communications ensure your business is on the leading edge and in tune with the millennial workforce that will drive your business into the future.

5. Staying current with evergreen cloud-based software

Keeping your communications systems current is important—not only to ensure your business leverages the full functionality and latest capabilities available in your communications system, but also to ensure security and stability.

However, software and firmware upgrades can be risky and challenging, particularly for an IT team that only occasionally performs system upgrades.

They require a lot of planning and coordination. Maintenance windows must be planned around business cycles and downtime is never acceptable—even when it’s planned!

Most premises‐based communications solutions offer software maintenance for an added cost. But the risk and hassle of actually performing the upgrade belongs to the customer—and there are costs associated with performing those upgrades. The current state of the system must be documented, the upgrade must be downloaded and tested, the maintenance window has to be scheduled and communicated, contingency and back out plans prepared, and extended support provided for “the morning after.”

A cloud communications solution also requires regular upgrades, but the risk belongs squarely with the service provider.

Of course, if the upgrade goes awry, your business may suffer, but your service provider should have the resources in place to minimize the likelihood, as well as service‐level agreements (SLAs) to mitigate the impact.

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Call Center Trends for 2017

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The 8 Most Important Call Center Trends For 2017

Call Center Trends

We saw a lot of changes to the call center and customer experience landscape in 2016. Cloud communications and virtual agents were on the forefront of everyone’s minds, and social media was more important than ever. 2017 is shaping up to be the year of strategic thinking: better analytics, more intentional social media conversations and innovative ways to involve artificial intelligence. To help you stay on target for 2017, we’ve identified eight of the most influential trends affecting centers so far.

1. Better contact center analytics

Gone are the days of relying on supervisor skill and know-how to get the most out of a contact center agent. Now, even smaller businesses are taking advantage of sophisticated analytics to turn data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more – into truly useful feedback for their agents.

It’s not enough to rely on manual observation and monitoring—there’s just too much information.

More omni-channel call centers are starting to rely heavily on analytics programs to build dashboards with the statistics that affect their businesses. We’re also seeing more and more businesses display this kind of statistical dashboards on user interfaces, so call agents and managers get real-time updates on customer experiences.

In general, we expect more advancements in analytics as companies continue implementing more unified communications platforms and strategies.

2. Omni-channel communications for all

A huge hot button in 2016, omni-channel communications continue to separate proactive businesses from their more reactive counterparts. A holistic view of the customer experience, factoring in an omni-channel approach, is helping businesses give customers a more personal feel to resolutions.

More businesses are recognizing that while a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback from the customer is taking place on a completely different channel.

Unifying customer communications across channels gives businesses better context for their customers, helps resolve issues more quickly and helps sales agents identify better opportunities for future sales.

3. Widespread adoption of cloud communications in call centers

Many businesses have already adopted cloud communications as part of their communications strategies, but cloud communications has become particularly important for contact centers. With the steady increase in remote call agents, cloud communications are a necessity for businesses who want to take advantage of seamless team communications and collaboration. With cloud communications, traditional office-based contact centers can take on new locations, grow and contract workforces as market needs demand it.

4. More robust customer satisfaction measurements

Customer satisfaction sends huge signals to companies about where and how their businesses could improve. Businesses approach customer satisfaction measurement in different ways, but slick all-in-one measure seem to be holding steady.

Amazon’s cornerstone Negative Response Rate (NRR) strategy continues to be a major part in calculating contact center customer satisfaction in 2017. No matter which measurements businesses are using, however, special care needs to be taken when addressing the customer experience across digital channels.

Using effective reporting and analytics tools that are integrated with your communications systems makes this process automatic and valuable.

5. More remote call center agents

Lower overhead, time zone flexibility, and flexible working hours have made remote contact center workers a stable trend for 2017. With constantly improving and unified cloud communications, remote workers have become a permanent (and beneficial) part of the contact center environment. With collaboration tools, contact center agents can take their work mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.

6. Continued emphasis on self-serve documentation

In 2017, so far we’ve seen a greater emphasis on self-service problem solving information on business websites. Giving customers information quickly helps reduce call volumes, and easy-to-navigate FAQs help narrow down calls to those with sufficiently complex issues. Quick access to self-serve solutions to problems also provides an emotional benefit to customers (that DIY fix high!), and reduces overall call times.

7. Two-way social media conversations

An effective social media presence is a necessity. Customers want a place they can go to give quick feedback, and learn about their favorite businesses. But the way businesses approach their social media conversations is changing.

It’s not enough to make witty posts or share images. Customers are looking for a two-way social media conversation, and when they interact with businesses online, they expect a personalized (and immediate) response.

Responsive businesses are using this trend to create a superb customer experience by unifying communications across channels into one stream. This helps their customers by connecting them with an agent who knows their purchase and service history, provides valuable context, and most importantly: the two-way conversation is public, on a social media platform, so that other customers can see how the business solved the problem.

Negative feedback can be a killer online, and unanswered negative comments make potential customers wary. If you positively resolve issues quickly and in a way that makes it clear the customer is central to the conversation, on the other hand, it leaves your business looking intelligent and caring, motivated by the customer experience.

8. Artificial intelligence integrated into customer interactions

Businesses are getting deeper into predictive analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) applications to help streamline call center experiences for customers and agents.

We expect that as early adopters continue honing AI applications for call routing, they will become more widely applied. We also expect to see more connections forged between various media channels and streamlined call center response. It’s worth investigating what AI options might benefit your business.

Call center and customer experience trends to activate

These eight trends have already made an impact on the contact center landscape in 2017, and look to continue through the rest of the year. Need more help figuring out how to apply them to your business? Get on a more strategic footing with our contact center solutions.

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Monetize Wi-Fi Calling a 4 Point Checklist

 

Monetize Wi-Fi Calling…A 4 Point Checklist

wifi calling

Connections matter in the information economy. But there are obstacles to staying connected—in-building coverage, international travel, and roaming limitations from cellular carriers. This has cause businesses large and small to offer Wi-Fi  calling to bridge the connection gap carriers have left.

Some companies offer Wi-Fi connections for the benefits of their employees or to keep costs down. But other companies are recognizing the value of filling that connectivity gap and considering ways to monetize their Wi-Fi networks by offering connections to their customers—for a fee. It’s an area of untapped opportunity and revenue streams for many businesses.

Monetizing Wi-Fi calling into a revenue stream isn’t always a straightforward proposition, though. So to help make sure you’re well positioned to take advantage of this trend, here are several things to consider when thinking about setting up a Wi-Fi calling service.

Not sure what exactly Wi-Fi calling is?

1. Do you have a Wi-Fi source with appropriate bandwidth?

First things first: in order to monetize your Wi-Fi network by offering Wi-Fi calling to customers, you need a Wi-Fi network with sufficient bandwidth. If you currently have a Wi-Fi network, how much traffic can it handle? What’s the minimum speed at capacity?

“In order to complete a WiFi call, a minimum of 1Mbps is required,” according to CNET

Take a long, hard look at your Wi-Fi network and run analysis to ensure you can deliver on the promise of Wi-Fi calling. If you don’t yet offer Wi-Fi access to your customers, make sure you shop around and look at the ability to scale and the throughput speeds needed to deliver Wi-Fi access worthy of payment. You may also need to ensure your network can support Wi-Fi calling on top of other Wi-Fi services, like simple Internet access and streaming services.

Want to monetize wi-fi calling? See how here!

2. Do you have a plan for fee structure and payment collection?

Whether your network is a dedicated Wi-Fi network, or a series of hotspots set up for you to draw revenue from, you should have a solid plan in place to collect fees from users. Will you use existing payment methods to collect your fees? Will you need to build new internal payment methods? Will you outsource fee collection? Whatever you choose, price your service accordingly to ensure your revenue exceeds your costs, even in times of slower traffic.

As well as a plan for how you will collect payment, you should determine your fee structure. Reasonable fees vary from country to country, and between industries. Most common fee structures include a flat rate per day, with a time limit enforced, or a staggered fee where consumers pay more for additional functions and speeds. Airlines offer services that last for the duration of the flight. There are many ways to slice and dice Wi-Fi revenue.

Wi-Fi calling is a valuable add-on for consumers and business users alike, especially if you offer service in areas of poor coverage. Consider a basic Wi-Fi service and a premium service that enables Wi-Fi calling to interested parties.

Check out our Wi-Fi calling solutions >

3. Do you understand the limits built in to certain phones and carriers?

Even if you offer a strong connection, and charge accordingly, some of your customers may be unable to participate in Wi-Fi calling simply because the make/model of their phones do not allow it. Others may be limited by their carrier’s plans. Keep tabs on which phone models and carriers have limitations in place by visiting support websites:

Some carriers limit Wi-Fi calling to in-country calling while others offer a wide range of countries to call with a Wi-Fi connection. Providing this information to your customers will simultaneously help protect you from angry customers who can’t participate in Wi-Fi calling, and serve as a value-add as a Wi-Fi calling provider.

If consumers are blocked by their phone or carrier, you can consider advising them they can use your Wi-Fi connection to run applications that bypass Wi-Fi calling with an over-the-top (OTT application), including Skype, Google Voice, Fring, Tango, and more.

4. Are you anticipating future connectivity needs?

Offering Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi calling may not be in the cards for your business today. As the proliferation of smart phones, connected devices, and mobility grow, the potential for Wi-Fi monetization grows with it.

Years ago, the idea of cord cutting, canceling cable subscriptions and relying on Internet only to access entertainment was laughable. Today, the decline in former pay TV subscribers is perilously close to double-digit percentages.

It may be a stretch to compare cord cutting with mobile provider contract cutting, but more and more consumers are opting to offload data usage to WiFi to keep costs down—and many carriers are encouraging this behavior to keep their networks manageable.

If you aren’t ready to monetize WiFi now, circle back and re-evaluate every six months or so. You may find that the business case makes sense more quickly than you think.

If you currently are already monetizing Wi-Fi now, make sure you stay up-to-date on ways you can make your network more valuable with features like Wi-Fi calling. Check network bandwidth and adjust prices accordingly.

Next steps

Wi-Fi calling has changed the game for consumers and mobile network operators (MNOs) alike. It could change the game for your business too, if you seek to monetize Wi-Fi calling as an additional business revenue stream.

To learn more about WiFi calling, download our free ebook, Voice Over WiFi for Dummies now. Chapter five, “Examining VoWiFi Use Cases,” may provide the answers to questions you have—if not, a friendly Towner Communications representative is always a click or phone call away.

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Why Your Business Phone Vendor Matters

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Your Business Phone Vendor MATTERS!

Business Phone Vendor

 

When assessing vendors for any major IT purchase, you’re making a big commitment in time, energy and budget. You’re putting trust in your vendor to deliver certain benefits and functionality. If your business phone vendor doesn’t deliver, you and your company could suffer because of it.

For business phone system and collaboration vendors, you have to take into account things like value for cost, features and benefits, integrations and interoperability, deployment models and more.

Lately, one seemingly innocuous factor has become increasingly important—vendor stability.

The reason vendor stability has become so important in business communications today is twofold.

  1. First, the speed of change and quick rise of new technologies are changing the communications landscape at a blistering pace, shaking up the traditional order of things. Old vendors may be displaced, but fast-rising vendors may fall just as quickly as they ascended.
  2. Second, vendor stability actually affects a huge number of other factors that affect the relative success or failure of your IT decisions, which we cover in this post.

With so much at stake, it’s important to understand exactly how your communications vendor’s stability can affect you and your company so you can make a truly informed decision.

Jump to a section:
Ability to strategize
Guiding philosophy
Solvency
Relationships and continuity
Squeezing resources
Changing pricing and cost structures
Updates and new features
Integrations and interoperability
Tech support
Timing of IT initiatives
Personal credibility

Ability to strategize

Technology decisions are no longer single points in time. Technology (including business communications and collaboration technology) is changing at such a rapid rate that the decisions you make today will affect your entire IT strategy roadmap down the line.

Your decision becomes less of an isolated event and more of the crest on a wave. You have to make decisions anticipating what changes will come. It’s no easy feat. And it gets even harder with an unstable business phone system vendor.

Uncertainty puts a big kink in your ability to come up with a reliable long-term strategy if you don’t have high confidence in your phone system vendor’s longevity and direction.

Without the confidence that your vendor will still be around long term and the understanding of where they’re headed with their technology, you’ve built unnecessary uncertainty into your own plan.

It’s hard enough to navigate a solid communications and collaboration IT strategy in optimal conditions. There’s no reason to add additional uncertainty to your strategy.

Guiding philosophy

While most IT pros don’t think about a communications vendor’s vision or philosophy as something that directly affects their daily lives, the indirect results of those philosophies certainly can.

If a vendor creates all of their offerings with simplicity and user-friendliness in mind, your company probably comes to rely on those qualities. Likewise, if a different vendor ensures everything they offer can be customized to the hilt. There are endless examples.

Your communications vendor’s approach may even be part of why you selected that vendor in the first place. So, if your vendor’s stability comes into question, will leadership continue to operate under the same philosophy? Will the same leadership even be in place?

Will the user-friendly company start releasing tech that’s harder to use? Will the low-price leader raise their prices? Will the customizable vendor start locking down your choices? You can’t say for sure. But an unpredictable change in philosophy could send your IT strategy for a spin.

Solvency

When you make a major technology purchase, you and your vendor make several commitments to each other. Your commitment is typically a financial one. Their commitment is typically to deliver technology (and possibly services) that meet certain requirements.

If your vendor gets into financial trouble, will they still be able to deliver on their commitments?

If you purchased ongoing support services, will they continue to offer them—or could they drop the contract in bankruptcy? If your contract included future upgrades, could those evaporate in restructuring? If you’re midway through a phased deployment, could they leave your project half done?

Regardless of the specifics, you don’t want to get left high and dry if your business phone system vendor gets into financial trouble.

Find out what industry experts have to say about the stability of specific vendors today >

Relationships and continuity

IT involves a lot of technology, but most people don’t realize how much it relies on relationships. IT pros often get into a rhythm with their day-to-day contacts from certain vendors.

People and teams that know you and your systems can become a huge asset.

Just think of how much time it takes to get a new person up to speed when your vendor changes one of your contacts. Months, sometimes months or years of hard-earned familiarity can be lost. Something your previous contact would have understood without saying now requires 45 minutes of background and half a dozen emails with network diagrams and configuration details.

When a business phone system vendor starts to get unstable, you can expect plenty of personnel changes. Your contacts could get reassigned or let go tomorrow. And there’s no telling how long your new contacts could last.

In fact, you don’t even know if your communications vendor will maintain the same approach to contact with their customers. Historically, if you had a problem, you’d call Jeff, the amazing tech who would stay on the phone until your issue was solved. With instability, trying to call Jeff might get you an automated message that tells you to check out their online FAQs.

Squeezing resources

Every business has a finite amount of resources. When a company’s stability comes into question, the company typically devotes a lot of time and resources to trying to right the ship.

People that may have previously been dedicated to functions that mattered to your success may have big chunks of their time sucked up in efforts to restructure the company or dramatically change the product portfolio or figure out a blitz of special promotions.

The list of activities is long, but the result is the same. All of the activities a communications vendor undertakes to try to re-stabilize the company inevitably takes major resources away from the company’s core activities. That means you get a little less of everything they previously offered.

Changing pricing and cost structures

Business communications vendor instability isn’t always an apocalyptic scenario. But even the adjustments a company can make to try to stay viable when they’re unstable can have a big impact on your business. Take pricing and cost structures.

Your vendor might try to raise margins on certain products to make up revenue, squeezing your IT budget. They could attempt to change one-time purchases to a recurring cost model. They could package up features that were once available a-la-carte. The list goes on.

The point is that your ability to budget for your business communications and collaboration expenses can get very shaky when your vendor is unstable. If you don’t have cushy cash reserves and a very understanding boss (and finance department), you may want to steer clear.

Click here to check out exclusive offers for Avaya customers and prospects >

Updates and new features

Even if a communications vendor doesn’t dissolve completely, instability can still spur less obvious disadvantages. Unstable vendors may stop delivering the same kind of innovation – or even just regular updates and new features – that you expect. Their stable competitors aren’t waiting around for them to catch up, either.

That cool new integration your competitor’s phone system vendor just added? You’re not getting that for eight months. That feature that’s all the buzz at this year’s IT conference? It’s not even on your vendor’s radar.

If you go with an unstable communications vendor, be prepared to answer a lot of questions about, “Why don’t we have that, yet?”

Integrations and interoperability

No business communications and collaboration system lives in a vacuum. It has to plug into CRMs and ERPs and database after database. So ask yourself this question—will all the vendors of products that integrate with your communications system continue to support those integrations if your vendor starts looking shaky?

Companies (like CRM providers) that integrate with many other companies’ offerings have limited time and budget for product development just like everyone else.

If your business phone system vendor begins to falter, your other vendors may begin pulling back support for integrations with those systems.

You may get compatibility for new features later than companies on communications systems from more stable vendors. They may elect to suspend updates until your communications system vendor’s situation has become more concrete. If you’re in a highly competitive industry, even these less catastrophic setbacks can chip away at your competitive edge.

 

Tech Support

phone system

Let’s say you get your phone system set up just the way you want it. It should run perfectly from then on, right?

Wrong.

Anyone in IT knows that’s not the case. Sooner or later, something will stop working the way you want it to.

Maybe a firmware update clashes with custom coding. Maybe your call controller decides it doesn’t feel like talking with your endpoints. Maybe provisioning a new user mysteriously breaks your CRM integration.

There’s not always a rhyme or reason to what goes awry, but even the best system will eventually give you something to figure out. And when it does, you need to know—will your vendor and relevant partners be around to continue offering support for their technology?

If your vendor has a history of stability, you can rest easy knowing that there will be someone there that can bail you out five, 10 even 15+ years down the road.

If your vendor is a little unstable, or just new enough you don’t know how long they’ll be around—they could be out of business before your product licenses expire.

Nobody has time for that. You don’t want to leave yourself vulnerable to running unsupported technology.

Timing of IT initiatives

Completing a major IT purchase can be a huge commitment involving lots of complexity. So why burden yourself with the added complexity of an unstable vendor?

If the communications vendor you’re focused on isn’t on solid footing, what are the chances your IT project will go ahead on schedule? People who have to approve your purchase may want to delay it just to see how your vendor’s situation works out. Can you afford that delay?

Even if you do get your purchase approved, organizational and personnel changes due to your vendor restructuring and downsizing could add their own unforeseen delays.

Whatever you thought your timetable looked like for your communications purchase and deployment before, you better start planning for big delays if you have an unstable vendor at the center of your project.

Personal credibility

Let’s face it, when you have to make decisions about technology for your company, those decisions reflect on your professional reputation. If a vendor you choose becomes unstable or even files for bankruptcy, how do you think it will affect people’s perception of you?

Will they have the same confidence level? Will you get greater scrutiny on the next IT purchase you have to make? Will your company reassign the responsibility for purchase decisions to someone else? Will questioning your judgement about your communications vendor turn into questioning your judgment about other matters?

IT already gets too much blame for circumstances beyond your control. Is it really worth risking your reputation on something that’s within your control?

What’s next

When your investment affects your business, you want to make sure you get the right combination of rock-solid stability and innovation to succeed.

It’s impossible to see the future, but there’s a lot of diligence you can do to give yourself confidence in your decision and protect yourself from undue risk.

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Towner Communications on Staying Relevant in a Changing Industry

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Towner Communications’ Julie Towner on Staying Relevant in a Changing Industry

Towner Communications

 

Acquisition and a willingness to embrace new market opportunities have been the keys to growth for third-generation, family-owned Towner Communications. The company started as a television repair company in 1965. Today it is a thriving B2B telecommunications company. Tune in to hear Julie’s story and her advice for growing your business.

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6 Major Risks of Open Source Phone System

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6 Major Risks of an Open Phone System

Six Major Risks of Open Source Phone Systems_0

 

It’s that time of the year again, budgets are being finalized and you just got the dreaded email saying you need to find a way to cut 10% off your IT budget. You run through the usual opportunities; conferences, travel, training, coffee service, your phone system—well that last one’s probably not on your short list. However, that does show up on a lot of IT leaders’ radars as a cost cutting opportunity.

Unfortunately, the conversation is generally short-sighted and organizations rarely have a true picture of the costs of a phone system. So, many companies look to open source phone system options as alternatives to more established systems that typically have “sticker prices.” On the surface, open source systems have a reputation for being famously inexpensive. Start with a little bit of know-how, add some IP phones and you’re in business, right?

If only it were that simple.

The up-front costs of an open source phone system might be slim to none, but the more you dig, the more you find costs – and risks – popping up down the road. So before you take the open source plunge on the promise of magical cost savings, be sure you consider these six factors – and the potential costs associated with them.

To clarify, when we say “open source phone systems,” we’re taking about true open source phone systems, where the entire source code is openly available to anyone online who can take it and use it to build their own phone system. We’re not talking about proprietary phone systems, even if those proprietary phone systems offer lots of compatibility and interoperability with third-party technology, like the phone systems we offer at Mitel.

Whether an open source phone system is right for you or not, it’s important to fully understand the risks to make an informed decision that won’t come back to bite you down the road.

1. Knowledge

With an open source phone system, your IT team will need to have a more-than-advanced knowledge of how to install and configure all the necessary components to bring the system to life.

Unless you are going with a managed services option, your team will need to deal with servers, operating systems, open source software, and network configuration. Getting all of these things right isn’t easy, especially when you are trying to do it on your own from community-developed install and administration guides.

Managed services providers are companies that have seen a business opportunity to take on the management of the open source products for you. The problem with this is that you are simply paying someone else to manage your risk for you. The risk did not go away, and the possibility of incurring an unexpected expense for support has increased exponentially.

2. Support

Support will always be a challenge with any type of open source platform, and open source phone systems are no exception.

Their most common flaw is the community, and not all communities are created equally. You are at the mercy of the IT professionals that are willing to take the time to share their knowledge of how things work in their environment. Often times you will be pointed to random support forums and information websites that are put together by the community.

How do you know if the answer you saw on the forum will fix your issue or make it worse? You don’t know.

No one is held responsible for putting out correct information about how the product works.

The “trick” to fix today’s issue might unravel into a larger issue the next time you apply an update to the OS on your server, a security patch to the application, or any change for that matter.

You have to trust that they told you the correct solution to your problem and it will continue to work in the future.

 

3. Product roadmap

In the open source community, you can typically find very little information on the exact direction a product set is headed. Sometimes these open source products disrupt the marketplace and push proprietary software vendors to advance their products, but most times, they lag behind the rest of the industry.

Vendors of proprietary technology spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research and development activities to push their products forward, as well as the underlying technologies that run those products.

Customers, boards, shareholders and more hold software and hardware vendors accountable for the direction their product sets are going. The open source community, however, typically responds to the loudest voice in the room—and not necessarily the one that creates the most value.

That feature you love? That process you use? With open source software, it could suddenly be sunset or go unsupported in future releases.

Working with a proprietary software vendor, you can rest assured they will be able to recommend a solution, because they simply know how their products are being used and the direction they are going in the future.

4. Customization

The age-old argument for using an open source phone system is that you can customize it in any way you see fit. You can integrate it with almost anything you can dream of. It sounds a little too good to be true, and it is.

Sure, you can customize to your heart’s content, but when you do, you just became a software developer. Is that the focus of your IT team?

Can you keep up with the necessary development cycles and cost to just keep it running? Probably not in your budget-cutting plans.

If you’ve been in IT long enough, you’ve heard someone say, “it worked with the last version, but not with this upgrade.” Working with a turnkey solution, your customization opportunities are limited, but supported. You will never be left out in the cold to figure it out yourself.

When you take an honest look at the customization needs of your business, you’ll most likely uncover that many needs are actually wants. And there’s a good chance you can save more money simply redesigning a business process than it would cost to support those customization wants.

5. Licensing

The number one and two arguments I’ve heard for going with any open source product are the licensing cost and length of licensing agreement terms. Often, these open source phone systems are free or only cost a few hundreds of dollars to license.

But open source licenses typically include only the bare minimum

Costs for support, installation, customization – even the additional talent or skills required to get open source systems running and keep them running – can quickly add up.

On the other hand, most the things I’ve touched on so far are typically wrapped into the cost of licensing for turnkey software. You know what you are getting from the product when you pay the licensing fees. It’s all very up-front and transparent, while the costs of an open source system tend to be unplanned surprises.

Regardless of the term limit on your contract with a proprietary software vendor, you are just as committed to them as you are with an open source product.

From a legal standpoint, you can certainly walk away today from your open source product and use something else, but you still have to deal with migrating to a new phone system. Switching systems is not something you can do overnight—it will likely take you just as long as the term limit on your contract. Free licenses are simply the bait to get you on the hook for using their software.

6. Security

The source code for the application lives up to its—namesake, open.

Anyone with a computer and a little time can simply download the same source files you did and dig through them for vulnerabilities.

They can even test out their hacks in real time to see if they work before they deploy them on an unsuspecting company. I don’t want to over emphasize this to the point that it sounds too doom-and-gloom, but it’s the reality of the situation.

This is not to say that proprietary software solutions are not vulnerable to security issues—security is a continuum, not a yes-or-no situation. But I would rather rely on the vendor that created the software, their development processes, their teams, and their contractual obligations that their software has been thoroughly tested for security flaws and all steps have been taken to mitigate these risk.

This again points to your willingness, or lack there of, to put your faith in the community of people that are checking the open source software for security flaws.

Understanding the true costs

Open source phone systems are very attractive to cost-conscious IT leaders. And for companies that truly know what they’re getting into and have the resources to support those systems, they may be a good option.

But be careful of how you define cost when evaluating open source phone systems.

You are likely to end up paying significantly more for that open source phone system (which promised you the cheaper price tag) than you would have if you went with a turnkey solution from commercially proven phone system provider.

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Thinking Bigger 25 Under 25 Winner

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Thinking Bigger 25 Under 25 Press Release

thinking bigger business

25 Under 25® Selects Towner Communications for 2017 Class of Honorees

Towner Communications has just been recognized as one of Kansas City’s best small businesses. It’s one of the winners of the 2017 25 Under 25® Awards.

Hosted by Thinking Bigger Business Media, the awards are presented to 25 local businesses with fewer than 25 employees. Each winner has demonstrated financial strength, the ability to overcome adversity and challenges, a commitment to the community and a powerful company vision.

“Small businesses are a powerful, but often overlooked force in Kansas City,” said Kelly Scanlon, CEO of Thinking Bigger Business Media and the creator of 25 Under 25®.

“Together, these companies employ thousands upon thousands of people, deliver innovative products and services, and help support our government, schools, nonprofits and other public resources. Of course, most of our winners are too humble and too busy to brag about their contributions. But it’s a story that needs to be told. The 25 Under 25® Awards are proud to celebrate the important service of small businesses.”

An independent panel of judges consisting of area business leaders chooses the winning companies. A complete list of winners can be found at www.25under25.com.

This is the 16th year for 25 Under 25®. This year’s honorees will be recognized during the annual 25 Under 25® Gala on Saturday, March 4, at the Downtown Marriott Hotel. Bob Regnier, president and CEO of Bank of Blue Valley, will receive the Entrepreneurial Legacy Award, which pays tribute to a leader who has made a lasting impact on KC’s business community. Tickets for the gala will go on sale Jan. 1 at http://ithinkbigger.com/events/25-under-25/.

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Unified Communications & Collaboration and Why Should I Care?

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Unified Communications & Collaboration and Why Should I Care?

What Does Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Mean?

Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) integrates communication forms like voice, video, and data services with software applications. This creates a cohesive environment that enhances business processes by making it easier for employees to connect, collaborate, and communicate effectively.

Key Components of UCC Include:

  • Instant Messaging: Real-time text communication between individuals or groups.
  • Presence: Knowing whether a contact is available, busy, or offline.
  • Unified Messaging: The ability to retrieve all messages (voicemail, email, SMS) from a single inbox.
  • Conferencing Applications: Tools for connecting large groups to share information and ideas seamlessly.
  • Teamwork Applications: Software that supports collaboration on group projects.
  • Video Conferencing: Enables video communication across PCs, mobile devices, and room-based systems.
  • Mobile Applications: Extends UCC capabilities to smartphones and tablets, ensuring communication continuity.

The Impact of Unified Communications and Collaboration

In today’s hyper-connected, always-on business environment, organizations face unprecedented pressure to operate swiftly and efficiently. Quickly finding the right people, accessing vital data, and exchanging information can determine your business’s success.

Unified Communications and Collaboration addresses these challenges by enabling more intuitive and efficient connections. UCC simplifies connectivity and improves business processes by uniting real-time and historical communication, like voice, video, and data services, into one environment.

Three Major Benefits of Unified Communications and Collaboration

Adopting a UCC strategy offers three significant benefits that can dramatically enhance employee collaboration and productivity:

1. Reduce Time Wasted

UCC provides real-time presence information across your organization, allowing employees to see their coworkers’ availability instantly. This feature reduces communication delays, enabling faster decision-making by helping you reach the right person quickly. According to a study by Frost & Sullivan, companies that implemented UCC solutions saw a 15% reduction in time spent on daily communications.

2. Connect Geographically Dispersed Employees

With businesses increasingly operating on a global scale, UCC is essential for bridging geographical distances. In Mid-Missouri, where teams are spread across Jefferson City, Columbia, and beyond, UCC enables real-time collaboration without in-person meetings. This capability ensures that your top talent, regardless of location, can contribute effectively to projects.

3. Provide Freedom of Choice for Maximum ROI

A comprehensive UCC strategy enables a mobile-first, any-device approach, letting employees choose their preferred communication methods. With BYOD policies on the rise, Columbia and Mid-Missouri businesses find that UCC reduces Shadow IT risks and boosts productivity. Gartner reports that companies adopting mobile-first UCC strategies see a 25% increase in employee satisfaction and engagement.

Proven Results of Unified Communications and Collaboration

Studies continue to show that UCC helps organizations save time and money by improving communication efficiency. For example, seamlessly switching between communication methods, like turning a chat into a conference call, greatly enhances information exchange. Organizations that implement UCC solutions reduce expenses related to employee downtime, travel, and mobile work by an average of 43%.

A Nexus study found that over 60% of firms using UCC save three hours a week per mobile worker. For Mid-Missouri businesses, this adds up to 12 extra hours of productivity per employee monthly—time for growth and innovation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Columbia and Jefferson City Businesses

Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) is more than just a technological upgrade—it’s a strategic initiative that can transform how your business operates. For companies in Jefferson City, Columbia, and across Mid-Missouri, implementing a UCC strategy can lead to significant improvements in efficiency, communication, and employee satisfaction.

Ready to bring your business to the next level?

Contact Towner Communications today to learn how our UCC solutions can help your Mid-Missouri business thrive.
Contact Towner

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Your Contact Center is Your Competitive Advantage

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Why Your Contact Center is Your Key Competitive Advantage (Video)

In this video blog, Mitel’s General Manager for Contact Center Brian Spencer discusses how mobility and big data are influencing customer experience, and how to transform your traditional contact center into a customer experience center for a sustainable competitive advantage.

Video transcript:

I’m Brian Spencer, the General Manager for Mitel’s contact center business, and I’d like to share with you our vision for the contact center as it evolves into the “customer experience center.”

Today’s consumers – they’re different. They’re not waiting until they get home to pick up the telephone and call into an organization to handle personal business. They’re working in real time. They want instant access to services – how they want it, when they want it. They’re typically going to start on a mobile device using a mobile app or a mobile website, some sort of digital tool. And, often, they’ll complete an end-to-end engagement and access the services they need autonomously, completely on their own.

Think about how you may engage with mobile banking. I know when I engage with mobile banking, I handle everything through the mobile app or the web app. In fact, I can’t remember the last time that I interacted face to face with a teller at the bank. That’s how consumers want to access goods and services, and that’s going to permeate businesses of all shapes and sizes moving forward – even yours.

So, my vision of the future is taking myriad contact centers and converging them into a center of excellence – a customer experience center – that is focused relentlessly on driving positive customer outcomes to create customer retention, loyalty, and long-term, lifetime customer value. How is that going to happen? Think about the customer journey. Your customers will engage through the mobile or digital tool of their choice. They’ll be on a mobile app and they’ll hit a point where they need to interact with a human. Today, there’s nothing more frustrating than getting 80 percent through accessing a service, having to stop, place a telephone call and start all over.

In the future, they’ll be accessing that service, they’ll hit the point where they need to interact with a human and, right through that mobile app, natively, they’ll be able to start a communication channel – maybe text-based, maybe voice-based, maybe video-based or using some media we’re not even thinking about today. But, in any case, it will come into that center of excellence, hit the right person at the right time – someone who’s relentlessly focused on pleasing them, who knows exactly what they’ve been through already and is able to pick up that conversation, creating a seamless transition from the digital tool to live assistance. They’ll be able to handle that sophisticated or more complicated requirement that couldn’t be handled through routine automation.

All of the data from that interaction will be captured, and business analytics will be used to allow management to constantly adapt the tools and the customer experience center processes and technologies to optimize the interfaces that customers want to use, increasing the level of service available through automation and also increasing the sophistication that the workers have in their ability to satisfy more complex tasks when engaged. They will be able to use that information to create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business, because you will be pleasing your customer better than your competitor down the road.

That’s our vision for contact centers transforming into customer experience centers in the future. I hope you share that vision and come along for the ride with Mitel and Towner Communications.

by the Experts at Mitel

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Mass Notification Saves Atchison Students and Staff

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Mass Notification Saves Atchison Students and Staff

Atchison Spill

 

Many times our clients scoff when we offer mass notification features, or they bock at us when we point out that critical errors or fixes need to be addressed in their phone system… JUST IN CASE….

Just in case happened to our partners at Atchison School District on Friday, Oct 22, when a major chemical spill threatened the lives of everyone in the area. Luckily the week before and even that Monday, Towner Communications had been working with officials in the school district to perform maintenance and address fixes that would have a great impact on the functionality of their paging system. It’s this attention to the “Just In Case” mass emergency notification system and it’s maintenance, that kept students and facility safe during what could have been a catastrophic and completely unforeseen situation.

 

NBC NEWS

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