Are you looking for ways to optimize your phone service costs? Managing essential expenses efficiently can be a daunting task. Towner’s Elevate Cloud Savings Calculator is here to simplify the process and help you save big on your cloud expenditures.
Calculate Your Cloud Savings with Ease
Towner’s Elevate Cloud Savings Calculator is a powerful tool designed to assist businesses and organizations in gaining insights into their cloud spending. Whether you’re using Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or any other cloud provider, this calculator will provide you with valuable information to make informed decisions.
Key Features:
1. Real-Time Insights: Our calculator provides real-time data analysis. You can track expenses, identify areas of savings, and make adjustments.
2. Multi-Cloud Compatibility: Analyze spending across cloud platforms, ideal for any provider or complex infrastructure.
3. Customized Recommendations: Uses patterns and costs to recommend cloud resource optimization.
5. Budgeting Assistance: Efficiently manage your cloud budget to prevent overspending
6. Cost Visualization: Visualize your cloud expenses with clear, easy-to-understand charts and graphs, making it simple to communicate your cost-saving strategies to your team or stakeholders.
How It Works
Visit the ServerData Elevate Pricing Calculator website: Go to CLICK HERE
Select Your Cloud Provider: Choose the cloud provider you use from the dropdown menu.
Input Your Data: Fill in the required information, such as your current expenses, usage, and any additional details specific to your organization.
Generate Insights: Click the “Calculate Savings” button to generate real-time insights, recommendations, and cost predictions.
Act on Recommendations: Implement the suggested changes to your cloud infrastructure and budget to maximize savings and improve efficiency.
Expertise: Towner and Intermedia are trusted names in cloud technology, both known for their expertise in helping businesses reduce telecommunication costs.
User-Friendly: The calculator is user-friendly and requires no technical expertise to operate, making it accessible to all team members.
Cost-Effective: Using this calculator is cost-effective compared to hiring expensive cloud consultants to assess and optimize your cloud spending.
Results-Driven: Our calculator is results-driven, helping you see immediate cost savings and plan for the future.
Constant Updates: The calculator is regularly updated to reflect changes in cloud pricing and industry best practices, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve.
Don’t let telecom expenses eat into your budget. Take control of your spending and start saving today with with Towner’s Elevate Cloud Solutions.
[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]HEY! Did you know that the industry average for upgrading or replacing your business phone system equipment historically has been every 5-7 years? In today’s world of urber newness, that’s like 75 to 100 in tech years! I don’t know about you, but when I hit that age, I’m going to be on a beach sipping cocktails! How long has that phone been sitting on your desk? Here’s the first hot tip that your, phones checked out to South Florida sipping mojitos…It has paper faceplates covered in whiteout! COME ON it’s mean to make Grandma work that long!
We get phone calls every day from business of all sizes that are still relying on equipment that is 10 years or older. It’s really embarrassing for them. Think Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell (insert Urban Dictionary definition HERE)…Not a good look huh? While every business is interested in watching costs it is a devastating mistake to continue thinking that you will deal with it when it breaks. This puts your business in crisis mode where the decision is based on “I need it now!” not is it what is best for my business. 2020 gave us enough crisis mode let’s start planning for our best business future.
Three steps to get started planning for a new phone system
MAKE A LIST: What are my current pain points? Are there things your old technology just can’t do, or things you’ve heard of you want to know more about? Shake your head yes because there are.
PUT SOMEONE IN CHARGE: Who is detailed oriented that can help gather all the info needed? This person should also be keeping the new information
CALL TOWNER: We can help get you started evaluating your business needs. Evaluation is FREE. You have NOTHING to loose but that old dinosaur!
Towner Communications’ Julie Towner on Staying Relevant in a Changing Industry
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.
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
A: UCC can significantly improve communication efficiency for small and medium-sized businesses in Columbia by integrating multiple communication tools into one platform. This streamlines operations, reduces response times, and enhances collaboration, which is crucial for businesses operating with limited resources.
A: In Jefferson City, industries such as government, healthcare, and education are particularly benefiting from UCC. These sectors require robust, reliable communication systems that support real-time collaboration and data exchange, making UCC an ideal solution.
A: UCC enables remote workers in Mid-Missouri to stay connected and productive by providing access to essential communication tools, regardless of location. Features like video conferencing, instant messaging, and mobile integration ensure that employees can collaborate effectively, whether they’re in Columbia, Jefferson City, or working from home.
A: When selecting a UCC provider in Columbia or Jefferson City, consider their experience with local businesses, the level of customer support they offer, and their ability to provide tailored solutions that meet your specific industry needs. It’s also important to evaluate their scalability options to ensure the solution can grow with your business.
A: Most businesses in Jefferson City and Columbia see noticeable improvements in communication efficiency and collaboration within the first few weeks of implementing UCC. Full integration and optimal use of the system may take a few months, depending on the complexity of your operations and the level of employee training.
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.
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.
Google “business collaboration tools” and you’ll get 58 million results. Suffice it to say, there’s a proliferation of collaboration tools out there, especially over-the-top (OTT) applications to help your business.
Some tools are for chatting, some for conferencing, some for screen sharing, some for file sharing, and so on (to the tune of 58 million results).
Most organizations use a large number of tools for communicating, collaborating, and sharing, so it’s easy to understand how workers can feel overwhelmed by the different collaboration tools used between departments and vendors.
The company might have an official collaboration tool. But your department uses the free version of another tool for convenience. Another department is running an inexpensive version of the latest, flashiest social/mobile group chat platform. Several people use screen share software from a new startup they just heard about while your vendors are using the old standbys, and somewhere, somebody is still trying to use AIM.
That means your users’ desktops and browsers are cluttered with collaboration tools. The minutes wasted just figuring out which tool to use and updating to the latest version at the beginning of meetings begin to add up to hours, days, weeks of lost productivity. And security is probably a distant pipe dream. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can tame the overload.
Here are eight steps you can take to get your company’s collaboration tool situation under control, pare down the number of applications in use, and start standardizing across your business to increase productivity.
Step 1: Identify current tools
When you run out of space on your smart phone, what’s the first thing you do? You identify the applications that are on your phone and take a hard, honest look at what you do and don’t use.
When employees run out of the capacity to handle the deluge of collaboration applications in use at your company, the first thing that needs to be done is similar—take an inventory of the tools users have on their systems.
You’ll probably find multiple applications for chat, video-conferencing, file storage, file sharing, etc.
Make a consolidated list of all the related applications you find and make notes about the primary functions of each.
Once you have a complete inventory, you’ll have laid the groundwork for step two.
Step 2: Identify your business needs
Now, it’s time to understand what exactly everyone is trying to accomplish with the different collaboration tools they’re using.
Ask yourself, your employees, your vendors, etc. what exactly they use each tool to accomplish, and why they prefer the tool that they use.
Some common functions include chat, group chat, file sharing, video calls, video conferencing, screen sharing, simultaneous file editing, approvals, and task/workflow management.
During this exercise, you’ll be able to see not only what collaboration tools different groups prefer, but why they use each tool. You might be surprised to learn that workers value one chat tool when you thought they preferred another. Or you might discover that they place more value on file sharing than they do on video calling. It may turn out that employees engaged in shadow IT are using a different tool simply because it offers a better user experience. Maybe the most important feature isn’t an application or communications channel in itself, but rather a capability—like a persistent experience across mobile as well as desktop.
The more data you gather, the clearer your company needs will be.
You may be able to gather a lot of this data by scanning employee devices, but some sort of direct employee engagement will be required. Employees are typically happy to fill out surveys to indicate their preferences, especially if the survey itself is intended to help make their lives easier.
If some employees are nervous about sharing, it may be important to assure them they won’t be disciplined (if you have company buy-in for this) for answering honestly. Some workers may be concerned that using things other than company purchased and/or approved collaboration tools will get them disciplined. But if you don’t create a safe enough environment to have an honest conversation about your company’s tools, you’ll never get a true view to help you get tool overload under control.
Step 3: Map needs to tools
Remember the application inventory you gathered? Now’s the time to bring it back.
Map the needs you’ve identified to the current tools you have. Which tools are offering the most collaboration capabilities based on the feedback you received? Which tools are under-utilized? Which tools are rarely utilized?
Take careful note of what you have, what you need, and be honest with your responses.
This step is for analysis only: don’t jump the gun and start cutting out applications. There are other consideration factors than the most popular applications for your employees (although that is absolutely important).
Step 4: Understand integrations
Here’s where your careful evaluation in step three will come in handy. Knowing the collaboration tools worth keeping depends on more than how certain tools map to certain needs: it’s also important to know how these applications interact with other applications, other collaboration tools, existing software—including, but not limited to—CRM, ERP, CMS, etc.
Is it necessary for your collaboration tools to be platform agnostic? Mobile-first? Easily scalable?
Different businesses have different needs, which is why so many collaboration tools exist in the first place. Different tools integrate with different vendors, software and APIs. Be picky—your employees will thank you for it.
Step 5: Consolidate tools
You’ve identified your current tools, specified your needs, mapped your needs to existing tools, and ran through your integration needs. Now’s the time to head to the chopping block.
See where you have overlap between tools. Look for opportunities to consolidate multiple functions into fewer tools if possible. Cut the applications that do not meet your needs or have insufficient integration capabilities.
It’s up to you if you wish to have multiple application tools to use if that works for you—otherwise cut the collaboration application dead weight.
But remember, it’s important to ensure that your final list of tools serves your workers’ needs.
If you cut critical capabilities when you cut out tools, you’ll find yourself right back where you started—with workers embracing shadow IT and unapproved tools to fulfill their needs.
If you’ve done your analysis thoroughly, your collaboration application list should shorten dramatically. If it hasn’t, it may be time to repeat steps one through five again to maximize the benefits of this exercise.
Step 6: Establish collaboration tool standards and policies
One of the reasons team collaboration tool overload exists in the first place is that companies haven’t established standards for preferred tools, that they fail to provide/approve tools that meet specific worker needs, or that they don’t enforce existing standards and policies. It’s never too late to lay down a concrete foundation for company-wide tools and applications.
If you don’t have standards and policies in place, this is the time to create them.
If you already have existing standards and policies in place, review them to make sure they’re up-to-date, especially with the company-wide collaboration applications now in place. Communicate your standards and policies far and wide within your company ad nauseum—it’s crucial to get your message across the multitude of messages your employees deal with every day.
Lastly, empower your IT staff to enforce these policies, whether it’s blocking certain applications from downloading, or performing daily/weekly/monthly scans for unapproved applications. If you find violators, be sure to understand why. They may help you uncover an important gap in your standards.
]Step 7: Provide adequate training
After you have the tools you need, and standards in place, make sure you provide training sessions so your employees know how to use your chosen tools and feel comfortable with them.
You can have the best collaboration tool out there, complete with chat, conferencing, calling, storage, and sharing features, with mobile-first design.
If your employees can’t figure out how to use it or access it from their devices, adoption and usage will suffer.
Then they’ll download the collaboration tools they are comfortable using, which will result in multiple applications across your company, and before you know it—you’re back to collaboration tool overload. Train your employees, provide support templates, enable your IT staff to answer any questions, or provide vendor contact information for product support.
When collaboration tools that meet your company’s needs are used effectively, productivity soars.
Step 8: Monitor and adjust
Keep an eye on usage to gauge what’s working and what’s not. When you catch something that isn’t working, make adjustments to tools, policies, standards, or workflows as necessary to get your employee collaboration back on track. There’s no reason to stick stubbornly to a standard or policy if it’s simply not working.
Kiss overload goodbye
Collaboration tool overload is more common than you think, but you can tame with this simple eight-step process. Making sure you understand the “why” that created the overload environment is key to getting it under control. And when you do, workers will benefit, your company communications will benefit, and overall company productivity and efficiency should benefit as well.
Pokémon GO is a hot topic. It seems you can’t escape it—in the news, on social media, or in your day-to-day life as you see people of all ages hunched over their phones, walking around outside. This wildly popular application has spurred discussions across a variety of topics—health, social interaction, marketing, gamification, pedestrian safety, and more.
There’s another lesson to learn from Pokémon GO: the value of a single, comprehensive application to enable team and project collaboration.
Observing strangers collaborate through this application can open your eyes to the potential potency (and potential shortcomings) of a business application that can foster teamwork in your business.
Setting the stage: the prologue
For those who aren’t sure how Pokémon GO works, it’s a real-time application in which you can catch Pokémon while walking around. With geo-tracking and real-time updates, players all experience the same interface—provided they’re in similar areas. The same creatures pop up on the screen, at the same time, at the same location. This accounts for many observations of increased social interaction, and also accounts for the parallel in team and project collaboration.
It begins with a quest
Parks are one of the best places to catch Pokémon. My husband and I frequent the park closest to us as a place to walk around and play Pokémon GO. We recently encountered a player who was on a quest for a specific Pokémon. He wasted no time in telling us he drove over 45 minutes to reach this park because he heard it was rich with a Pokémon he desperately wanted to add to his collection and asked us if we’d seen any.
We pointed him to an area where we found the creature he sought and we heard his triumph when he found it and added it to his collection. He proceeded to scour the park. Anytime we found the Pokémon he was looking for, we called out to him to help direct him to the right area to catch it. Strangers collaborating to chase invisible pocket monsters on a smartphone application—who’d have thought?
Teamwork makes the dream work
For this particular Pokémon GO player, he was able to complete his quest for catching Pokémon because all players experience the application in real time. By collaborating with other players, he identified the park as a place he needed to visit and he was able to add the necessary Pokémon to his collection. This story is a testament to the power of a real-time application and online collaboration capabilities accessible by all. If a player can accomplish so much from the application, what implications are there for businesses?
But could teamwork be easier?
The Pokémon GO collaboration experience could be better because it doesn’t offer the in-app ability to message another player or group, or share images of any kind. Although the application revealed the necessary Pokémon for this player, he relied on friends and external websites to provide the best possibility of completing his collection.
Maybe it’s because I’m a millennial but I honestly think the Pokemon Go collaboration experience could be both easier and improved: taking a seamless application operating in real-time and adding the ability to message others, post discussion threads, share images and insights, and work in other applications and links would enable any player to get the information needed to play effectively.
Relying on multiple applications to allow full collaboration creates a disjointed, less effective experience than if all of the capabilities were built-in.
Business collaboration in real time
It’s estimated that the average employee spends up to an hour every day trying to get in contact with people, find meeting rooms, and track projects and emails.
Helping employees easily contact each other can immediately boost productivity.
For a workforce on-the-go, uniting multiple channels of communications in a single mobile-first application—email, chat, phone calls, text, video—can drastically improve both productivity and output for a business. Top team collaboration tools make it a point to prioritize accessibility, visibility, and real-time tracking of various projects, documents, and presentations so workers get more out of every hour they put in.
If it works for Pokémon GO players, it will work for your business
Back to the zealous Pokémon GO player who traveled 45 minutes to get to the park that held the Pokémon he needed.
On the positive side, the synchronized application experience paired with real-time capabilities helped him to complete his. On the negative side, he had to lean on other applications to accomplish his mission, and was ultimately successful.
A comprehensive interface certainly would have helped him accomplish his goal more efficiently, just as a more complete collaboration tool helps workers get more done faster.
Unlike Pokémon Go, there are applications with a complete set of tools to help your employees collaborate. If you give your employees the opportunity to collaborate with a communications system that promotes project collaboration on a platform designed with mobile in mind, your employees will be able to work efficiently and effectively, at any time, in any location.
Many businesses today have one piece of the puzzle—like Pokémon GO—but choosing a truly integrated collaboration experience can really give you a competitive edge.
Team and project collaboration checklist
There are many communications vendors for businesses to choose from. In order to get the most effective solution for your business, make sure it is:
Mobile-enabled
Real-time
Inclusive of all communications channels
Ready for project collaboration
Able to share documents and track updates
Secure
CRM-compatible
Our MiCloud Office platform has all these features and more. To get an idea of what a first-class, comprehensive system looks like, watch the MiCloud Office Demo.
Whether for cost-savings, BYOD considerations, ease of administration, or reliability, school districts across the United States are actively shifting communication and collaboration to the cloud. It’s a Path to the Cloud!
As part of this shift, schools and administrative offices are deploying Google’s cloud-based education apps – like Google’s free email services – allowing them to free up millions of dollars for other initiatives.
Some K-12 organizations have hesitations about the security of sensitive data in the cloud, but as adoption grows across the education sector, more and more schools are considering cloud technology to achieve their goals. Many educational organizations seeking the benefits of cloud communications and collaboration look to Mitel. We manage a rich ecosystem of solutions that’s integrated with the largest technology partners in the industry, including Google and Microsoft.
Many educational organizations seeking the benefits of cloud communications and collaboration look to Mitel. We manage a rich ecosystem of solutions that’s integrated with the largest technology partners in the industry, including Google and Microsoft.
Microsoft Lync Integration
Mitel MiVoice for Lync, for example, seamlessly integrates features – like integrated softphone, voice integration and click-to-call support – with Microsoft applications to offer robust voice capabilities.
Google Integration
Mitel MiCollab is our anywhere, any-device collaboration software. It integrates with Google Cloud Platform and Google Apps, enabling collaboration through voice; instant messaging; presence; and audio, video, and web conferencing. MiCollab also seamlessly interacts with Google’s calendar, email and contact management apps.
Bonus: With MiCollab, a user’s presence status automatically updates according to the Google Calendar scheduling.
“Given the explosive growth of cloud-based apps and communications, Mitel provides the best path to the cloud for schools.”
Cloud Deployment Flexibility
With a unified communications and collaboration architecture focused on ease of use and administration, Mitel provides public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid deployment models. With Mitel, your school can deploy applications in a private cloud, a public cloud, on premise, or a combination thereof. And you’re never locked in to a single deployment model—you can move applications when conditions change.
The software remains the same; only the location changes. It’s how our MiCloud for Education solutions easily accommodate school districts’ changing needs and preferences over time.
Cloud Security & Reliability
Cloud deployments merit special consideration when it comes to security. Your educational organization will need to work with communications and collaboration providers like Mitel to isolate and protect your networks, applications and data. But the technologies and strategies for securing cloud-based deployments are advancing every day, and Mitel is leading the charge.
If you’re concerned about the reliability of cloud communications, consider this: If your network fails, communication with the outside world will be impacted whether your system is on premise or in the cloud. Fortunately, in a highly distributed school system, a network failure in any building will only impact a single location, and mobile communications can help your school weather the event until full service is restored.
Finding Your Path to the Cloud
Hundreds of school districts throughout the United States have deployed Mitel Voice and Unified Communication solutions. They’ve found that the cloud is a far more dependable platform than they expected, and that it offers advantages they had never imagined. It’s time to start taking a serious look at long-term strategies for cloud communications at your school—and how MiCloud for Education can help.
The term “contact center” often conjures up an image of large numbers of agents handling incoming and outgoing calls all day, every day. In some cases, this is an accurate interpretation of how customer engagement truly works.
However, Gartner predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human
With this in mind, it’s clear that contact center technology is going to increasingly drive digital engagements and organizational workflows. The focus is on removing departmental silos to ensure the full context can be brought to every single customer engagement and interaction.
A busy port tackles complex logistics
By way of example, a European sea port had a challenge connecting their large database of lorry drivers to incoming ships full of containers that needed ongoing transportation around the continent. The drivers were typically paid a day-rate, so the company needed a system to ensure that they efficiently allocated jobs, and then accurately and quickly paid for the work they’d completed. This may sound simple, but with one of the world’s busiest sea ports and a very large number of contract drivers, this was proving a complex scenario to manage well, and was potentially open to error and fraud.
The port ultimately worked with us to design a system that integrated our contact center with the company’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. As a new ship arrives in the port, the ERP system calculates the number of trucks, forklifts and cranes required and the contact center then automatically contacts the drivers by SMS. The driver responds by SMS, directly back into the contact center, indicating acceptance of the job in the ERP system. The driver then receives the destination by SMS and makes the delivery. Goods-in confirms the delivery by SMS, and the driver is automatically flagged for payment.
Keeping trucks rolling at a manufacturer
Similarly, a large truck manufacturer wanted to ensure fast, efficient, consistent and cost-effective repair and recovery when one of its vehicles suffered a breakdown. With their new system, in the event of a breakdown, the driver makes a quick call or SMS into a centralized contact center. The agent uses a desktop manager application to locate the nearest approved repair and recovery service, with an SMS triggering a callout to the truck location. The truck is repaired, confirmed by SMS and the contact center generates a ticket (with the call recording and SMS attached as an audit trail). Payment is then automatically processed via ERP integration.
Automating new advantages in place of human error
In both cases, the company used customer engagement technology and its close integration with the ERP system to facilitate a series of automated workflow processes to minimize human involvement and associated error. The organizations both ended up with an effective solution that both improved efficiency and removed costs. Learn how we can help and talk with us today.
Pokémon GO is a hot topic. It seems you can’t escape it—in the news, on social media, or in your day-to-day life as you see people of all ages hunched over their phones, walking around outside. This wildly popular application has spurred discussions across a variety of topics—health, social interaction, marketing, gamification, pedestrian safety, and more.
The term “contact center” often conjures up an image of large numbers of agents handling incoming and outgoing calls all day, every day. In some cases, this is an accurate interpretation of how customer engagement truly works.
