Mobile

Name: Towner Communications
Price range: $$

May 25 2016

Business Practices for the Mobile Workforce

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, Collaboration, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile, Productivity, Small Business

Such a significant shift in business practices alongside countless technological innovations is set to make businesses more nimble, efficient and competitive. For example, city-wide cloud computing platforms could help start-ups take advantage of new technologies and applications without having to invest huge sums of money in in-house hardware and software.

business practices

The global talent pool

The virtual model is already altering recruitment strategies too. Faced with a global skills shortage, good talent is increasingly hard to find, but technology has created a global talent market that simply wasn’t accessible previously. This means that the labor market will need to prepare for an extremely competitive landscape, but at the same time businesses can prosper with a globally best-in-class workforce. For the HR team, this poses new questions/challenges: how does a company’s use of local talent weigh up against a remote workforce?

Striking a healthy balance and supporting remote workers through the provision of collaboration tools and creating productive environments for small work groups when they need to get together will become critical. Online freelance worker platforms like Elance.com are already contributing to the shift in business dynamics as the adoption of contracted workers for many types of job functions grows. Many SMEs and startups have already embraced hiring and managing talent ‘in the cloud’ in this way, but we are also now seeing a sharp increase in Fortune 1000 and FT 500 companies moving into the human cloud.

Business agility

Large and multinational enterprises are adopting the online employment model that gives them the flexibility to scale up and down, hire faster, make cost savings and take advantage of ‘act on demand’ opportunities. Towner Communications provides the tools that are needed to reflect this dynamic model. Increasingly, individuals are adopting ‘portfolio careers’ whereby they undertake several paid activities simultaneously rather than being limited to a single job role. This lends itself perfectly to the new freedoms and flexibility of the next generation work model. All of these trends make for a much more fertile landscape for start-ups setting up shop, but it doesn’t need to stop at the entrepreneur.Today’s businesses have access to free tools, innovative cloud-based technologies and vast internet resources. The next generation work model brings great opportunity but also poses challenges for many different parts of a business and all divisions will be impacted, from HR and operations to sales and finance.

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

April 28 2016

Are You Easy To Do Business With?

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, mitel, Mobile, Productivity, Towner Communications

The things you’re likely to hear among your social circle aren’t that different from what your customers talk about when it comes to business. Just as you might spend Friday night at your favorite bar talking about everything and anything amongst your closest group of friends, your customers are swapping stories that include their experiences with the kind of service your brand delivers—whether they realize it or not. They’re pushing carts past each other at the grocery store, sitting next to each other at the nail salon and bumping into each other at the gym. These are all perfect times to chat about what’s on their minds, and you don’t want it to be negative blows to your business.

Let’s not pretend like we haven’t heard this kind of talk before: “Ugh, I was on the phone for almost an hour with the most annoying call center agent.” or “Why do they make it so hard to sort out a minor issue?”

According to a 2012 Global Customer Service Barometer conducted by Echo, customers are twice as likely to share their bad customer service experiences rather than talk about good ones. So, the question here is simple: How easy is it for customers to do business with you?

If your customers are putting your business down, the reason may have nothing to do with the staff or strategies you employ. Rather, it could have everything to do with the technology you deploy. For example, research from Forrester shows that 42 percent of service agents are unable to efficiently resolve customer issues solely due to disconnected systems, archaic user interfaces and multiple applications.

The answer? Unified communications (UC). Empowering your service agents with unified communications solutions like Web and video chat helps them get to the root of customer issues and inquiries with lightning speed; meanwhile, presence, conferencing and mobility capabilities enable your internal team to stay dynamic and team-ready to support your customer base.

Click here to begin exploring your UC options with Towner Communications.

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

March 31 2016

BYOD Can Help Team Collaboration

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, Midsize Business, Mobile, Mobilizing, Productivity, Towner Communications

Team Collaboration at desk with coffee and laptops

The BYOD (bring your own device) discussion is still as relevant today as it was when the conversation started years ago, raising questions about productivity, cost savings and network preparedness. And with a millennial mentality surging through the workforce, the conversation of pros and cons of BYOD is actually even more critical to address.

For us telecom and IT junkies, the fun parts of BYOD are all about the network. How do we prepare for bandwidth intensive applications? How do we mitigate security concerns that come along with BYOD? How will a cloud or on-premises or even a hybrid phone system affect a BYOD model? Even if you’re not an IT or telecom junkie, these are very serious questions that you should definitely talk about with your business phone provider.

What about all of you business owners and leaders out there looking for the holistic business benefits of a BYOD communications model? We have one word for you. Collaboration. Ok, make that five words – higher productivity and seamless collaboration. You might be saying, “A device is a device. Does it really matter where it comes from?”

Here are four reasons the answer is YES:

1) Adds 2 productive hours to the day

According to a study conducted by BMC Software, employees engaging with business collaboration apps work 120 more productive minutes every day.

2) Freedom to work whenever you need to

We are no longer confined to a 9-5 work day. Productivity takes places at any given hour of the day. At least 30 percent of BYOD workers check their email and other business collaboration apps between 6am – 7am, and 20 percent between 11pm – 12am. Enabling employees to access business collaboration applications from their own devices will increase their willingness to put in the work time, no matter when or where.

3) Less is more. Seriously.

Let’s be real. How many people want or need to carry around two phones or two devices? Giving your employees the weightless freedom to carry the device they want, no matter when or where they are, will not only increase productivity, but enhance creativity, attention to detail and overall effectiveness.

4) 10,000 pennies saved is 10,000 pennies earned

Last but not least, let’s not ignore the pure cost benefit. BYOD is a clear cost benefit to businesses. The employee, who already has the necessary devices to enable applications for business reasons, has already absorbed the cost of the device itself, along with services. According to Gartner, even back in 2014, “IT leaders can spend half a million dollars to buy and support 1,000 enterprise-owned tablets, while they can support 2,745 user-owned tablets with that same budget.” That’s nearly three times more devices on the same budget. And that’s just the start.

Learn more about our MiTeam Collaboration collaboration software >

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

March 29 2016

Team Collaboration Shaves Your Day

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, cloud, Cloud Communications, Collaboration, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile

Here’s something to think about the next time you’re listening to music on hold: How much time does inefficient communication drain from your workday? The answer may surprise you.

The average knowledge worker, according to some estimates, spends more than one hour every day simply trying to communicate with people: checking emails, setting up meetings, leaving voicemails, etc.

And that doesn’t take into account the delays that result as you wait for people to check those emails or voicemails and get back to you.

Fortunately, there’s a great way to trim this waste out of your workday, and it doesn’t require that you go on a communications diet. In fact, you can communicate and collaborate all you want—and keep saving time as you do it. The secret is to unify your communications in the cloud. By putting all of your communications and collaboration tools into one application and hosting it in the cloud, you can trim seventy minutes or more from your workday and get more done. Here’s how.

1. Stop checking multiple messaging apps (Save 40 minutes per day)

Studies show that workers spend as much as 40 minutes (or more) each day checking and re-checking different messaging applications including email, voicemail, texts/IMs and other apps. With unified communications (UC) in the cloud, all messages can be corralled into a single app and screen, so you don’t need to open up and check multiple apps, multiple times per day. And with services like voicemail-to-text, you can save even more time by converting your voicemails into email messages.

2. Reach colleagues right away (Save 30 minutes per day)

Find-me/follow-me, call forwarding, single-number service—call it what you will, when calls go directly to the right person rather than their voicemail, it saves a lot of time. (On the other side of that coin, it can take eight hours or more before a person listens to their voicemails.) Factor in presence-based communications tools that let you know when called parties are available, and you can cut down your phone-tag time by half an hour every day.

3. Don’t juggle other people’s calendars (Save time and your sanity)

Arranging a multi-party conference call can feel like herding cats; as soon as one gets in line, another escapes. Cloud-based UC tools simplify real-time collaboration by allowing you to launch a video- or audio conference on the fly, or view colleagues’ status to see when they’re available.

4. Have the answers now—and not when you’re back in the office (Save time, gas and customer relationships)

Knowledge workers need access to critical, and often sensitive, business information from wherever they’re working: at home, at a client site, on the road, etc. Cloud-based communications allow employees to quickly locate and retrieve information in real time from any device—and not just when they’re back in the office at their computer. That means customers can get answers faster, and stay happier longer.

Of course, not all cloud solutions are created equal. You need to consider cost, complexity, security, reliability and compatibility with the tools you use today. And when everything is considered, more companies choose Mitel for their business cloud communications than any other provider in the world.

Learn more about Towner Communications and the MiTeam cloud collaboration suite >

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

February 4 2016

Is Cloud-Mobile Convergence the Future?

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog cloud, Cloud Communications, mitel, Mobile, T-Mobile

A note to small and medium businesses: You can have it all with Cloud-Mobile.

That’s the message from T-Mobile and Mitel, as the two companies launch a new-look approach to the old challenge of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) in select European markets. Marketed as Cloud & Clear, the new offering is an update to the traditional FMC goal of combining fixed (i.e., landline) and mobile phone calls into a single seamless experience that can share the same number and call features.

As its name implies, the new wrinkle in T-Mobile’s offering is the cloud, which now replaces the traditional premise-based portion of the fixed phone experience and provides a smoother migration path to the cloud for enterprises. Targeted initially to the small and medium business market, Cloud & Clear features a variety of Towner Communications technology including our collaboration, unified communications and VoIP solutions—technology that is already well entrenched in thousands of SMBs worldwide.

Recognizing that not all users have the same communications requirements, enterprises can use Cloud & Clear to select and customize user profiles based on common consumption models. Office workers, mobile workers, telecommuters and road warriors are each assigned their own set of features and services to keep costs low and productivity high.

The new solution is currently being rolled out in Europe through T-Mobile’s business partners and will enable the mobile service provider to better serve SMB customers—particularly those that are looking for a seamless migration from their current premise-based phone systems to the cloud.

For industry reaction to the news, read the original UC Strategies article T-Mobile and Mitel Introduce ‘Cloud & Clear’ by Blair Pleasant.

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

December 3 2015

Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid Communications

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, Cloud Communications, Growth, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile, Productivity, technology

If you’ve considered upgrading your business phone system, chances are you’ve looked at the differences between cloud hosted systems and on-premises systems—and maybe even discovered the hybrid communications system option, which bridges cloud and on-premises environments. You might also have uncovered a ton of information about the differences online. But what are you supposed to do with all that information? Does it put you any closer to a decision? For many businesses, the answer is no.

So we at Towner Communications put together this simple decision tree to help make things easier. It helps you work thought the most common, critical decision points that most businesses have to take into account. Is it a substitute for a consultation with a Mitel rep or your authorized Mitel partner? Probably not. But it’s a great place to start and will give you a much better idea of which way you should be leaning.

Mitel Unified Communications Trio on landline, mobile phone, and laptop

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

November 27 2015

Guide To Cloud Communications

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, cloud, Cloud Communications, Customer Experience, Growth, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile, Mobilizing, Productivity, Small Business, technology

THE BUSY PERSON’S GUIDE TO CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS: As children, we discover that the cloud, like a snowflake, aren’t all created the same. There are cirrus clouds (wispy), cumulus clouds (white and fluffy) and stratus clouds (sheet-like) varieties with a seemingly endless number of sub-varieties. In the same way, cloud communications technology has its own categories—public, private and hybrid cloud communications systems. Telling them apart isn’t as simple as matching a shape with a name and, as a result, there’s a good deal of confusion around what each entails. We created this post to clear up some of that cloud confusion and help you decide which kind of cloud might be right for you.

Public Cloud

The public cloud is what most of us think of when we hear about a system or application being offered in the cloud. As its name implies, it’s publicly available infrastructure that is constructed as a multi-tenant system (i.e., multiple businesses using the same infrastructure) and leased to companies on a sliding monthly scale depending on the amount of cloud capacity they need. Amazon Web Services and Google’s Cloud Storage are examples of public cloud platforms, as are application-specific public cloud offerings like Adobe Creative Cloud and Salesforce.com.

Public clouds are popular because they often feature a low entry cost (remember, you’re not buying any hardware with a public cloud solution) and fast access to vast amounts of capacity during demand spikes. For example, a videoconferencing system deployed in a public cloud could scale out seamlessly to handle high demand during an all-hands meeting, then scale back down when the meeting has ended. Unfortunately, the “public” aspect of the public cloud can present security concerns for enterprises, particularly in heavily-regulated industries, like financial services and healthcare.

Private Cloud

In situations where security trumps cost, a private cloud is the better path. A private cloud often features many of the same scales of efficiency as a public cloud—virtualization, converged infrastructure, etc.—with the distinction that it’s a private, dedicated system residing in the enterprise’s own data center instead of hosted remotely by a third party. The shielded nature of the private cloud allows enterprises to manage access and security in order to meet industry compliance requirements and protect sensitive data. That security, however, comes at a cost; private clouds are typically more expensive than public clouds because of the investment in hardware and the IT resources required to manage them.

Hybrid Cloud

The third type of cloud, hybrid cloud, is really a mixture of public and private clouds. Why would you want to mix cloud types? Well, let’s consider our earlier scale-out example of videoconferencing. In a private cloud architecture, an enterprise would need to overprovision their private cloud to meet peak demand. In other words, much of the time, a sizeable portion of their private cloud would go unused. By extending their private cloud with extra capacity in the public cloud during peak usage periods—a technique known as cloudbursting—enterprises could ensure high performance levels at a lower cost without compromising security.

Which one’s right for you?

As you can see, choosing the right cloud for the job depends on the type of application you have in mind. To give you the most flexibility in the future, look for cloud solutions that support standards like OpenStack and popular hypervisors like VMware’s vSphere. That way, Towner will be able to integrate public and private cloud environments more easily when the need arises.

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

November 25 2015

3 Keys to a Reliable Voice Network

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Customer Experience, Growth, mitel, Mobile, Small Business, technology, Voice Network

It’s among an IT manager’s worst nightmares: a network outage during a retailer’s high volume period – Black Friday. As the holiday season kicks off and big shopping days loom, IT staff can take steps to ensure reliable voice service, even under high volume holiday conditions.

1. Get alerted BEFORE customers are impacted

Outcomes are always better when you can be proactive, rather than reacting after a problem has caused significant losses. Software that monitors performance of Mitel and third-party devices like routers and UPS systems can detect developing problems at an early stage using configurable thresholds. Alerts are then sent to IT staff in real-time via email, SMS or Twitter DM.

2. Find out where the problem is—quickly

Finding the source of a problem is a top challenge for IT staff managing voice networks. VoIP quality is highly dependent on network performance, and there are many possible points of failure in today’s complex networks. Monitoring all of these devices is the first step. The second is testing tools that can pinpoint the problem quickly. Secure remote access to any monitored device can help fix the problem once the source is identified.

Check out the 2 Minute Video – Fast Voice Quality Problem Resolution with MarWatch.

3. Prevent problems in the future

Ideally, retailers should go into the busy holiday period knowing their voice network is ready to handle expected call volume. To achieve that, you need historical data on trunk utilization, call volume and quality. You can use this data to ensure you’ve upgraded as necessary to handle increased volume.

Towner Communications partners and customers that use MarWatch Fault & Performance Management software are proactively preventing downtime, for reliable voice service year-round. Angels the Costumiers is just once example, with a busy retail outlet that experiences high call volume at Halloween:

“The store spans 5 floors, and with high call volume coupled with the need for fast communication within departments, customer service depends on reliable voice services. MarWatch gives us confidence that our network will perform reliably even under high volume conditions.” —Jeremy Angel, Angels the Costumier

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

November 23 2015

Millennials Change The Rules of Customer Experience

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Customer Experience, mitel, Mobile, technology

The baby boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) has been a very dominant force in society for much of the latter half of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first. However, as the baby boomers reach retirement age, their influence is starting to diminish, along with their spending power, in all facets of daily life.

Generation X (born in the 60s and 70s) came after the boomers, and while they grew up with early versions of today’s technology, they had to learn and adapt to it over a period of time.

However, members of the millennial generation (born in the 80s and early 90s) were born into the technological era and for the most part, have never known a time when there weren’t computers, fast internet and mobile technology everywhere.

Millennials, representing a third of the population, are now entering the workplace en masse. As consumers, millennials are starting to have significant spending power and influence.

To an extent, this generation has rejected the traditional PC and traditional phone call that their parents may have introduced them to in favor of all things mobile.

Millennials tend to be far more comfortable communicating by email, text message, web chat and social media from a mobile device. In fact, in many cases, a traditional voice call is seen as old-fashioned—something mainly used to keep in touch with parents and grandparents.

This has huge impacts for businesses wanting to access the spending power of millennials. Respected market research organizations are pointing to the fact that, over the coming years, companies will no longer be able to rely on a basic call center to handle phone enquiries and to process new business. How do today’s customers want to communicate with you?

Synthetix points out that 90 percent of today’s consumers will always check a website before contacting a company
The Harris Poll found that 64 percent of consumers prefer texting over voice as a customer service channel
Sixty-three percent of online consumers said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat, according to Forrester
Twenty-five percent of consumers utilize one to two channels when seeking customer care and 52% of consumers utilize three or four channels, reports Ovum
Convergys asserts that the number of consumers preferring automated self-service has doubled to 55% in the last five years

As a result of these rapidly evolving mobile trends, a complete customer experience is (or should be) top of mind for C-level executives. It’s becoming increasingly clear that customers are powerful word-of-mouth marketers; a positive customer experience can result in 69 percent of customers recommending a company to others. On the flip side, 79 percent of customers will readily share any negative experience (Harris Interactive).

An engaged consumer buys from your business 90 percent more frequently, spends 60 percent more per transaction, and is five times more likely to indicate exclusive loyalty to your brand (Rosetta).

Adding further weight to this, Harvard Business Review reports that customer experience leaders grow their revenue more than twice as fast as laggards.

For organizations that are currently relying on voice-only call centers, these new trends require a shift in mindset toward building a completely customer-centric organization. It means embracing the new digital technologies in your contact center to exceed customer expectations, weaving the customer into the fabric of the business and responding with agility at all times.

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

November 20 2015

The Great VoLTE Shift

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog mitel, Mobile, Productivity, VoLTE

VoLTE: Enterprise mobility has been a buzzword for several years now, but a new shift is taking place, fueled by the convergence of a common IP between enterprise and mobile communications systems. This new model of communications, which seamlessly integrates the mobile and enterprise communications environments, is called the mobile enterprise. It’s not an easy concept for everyone to grasp the first time around, so we sat down Terry McCabe, the Chief Technology Officer of our Mitel Mobile Division, to help explain how it works.

Q: How has VoLTE shifted the way mobile operators conduct business? How has it changed their role as service providers?

Terry McCabe: In today’s competitive mobile marketplace, it has become more crucial than ever for the traditional service providers to maintain and evolve their relevance to their customers. Mobile operators for some time have talked about not wanting to become relegated to the role of mobile broadband providers, while struggling to retain their role as ubiquitous communication service providers.

Now, however, with the technological underpinnings of VoLTE, or voice over LTE, operators have the opportunity to separate the services they offer from the network technologies over which those services are accessed. Traditionally the access technology dictated the service offered. However, IP technology enables the operator community to participate in the disaggregation of service and access (a direction previously trail-blazed by Internet services like Skype, Viber, Whatsapp etc.).

VoLTE is an inevitable technology evolution for the mobile operator community triggered by the all-IP nature of the LTE core networking technology. The deployment of VoLTE enables improved user experience for operators’ customers while also creating the means to change their business model and innovate new services.

It helps to consider VoLTE as an inflection point where technology and underpinnings have been introduced that form the basis of a wide range of new services. With Towner Communication’s portfolio of technology, operators can enhance relationships and offer enriched services.

Learn more about the mobile enterprise >

Wanna get nerdy with us? Sign up for our emails!

Mobile

Business Practices for the Mobile Workforce