Blog wizard' Post

Verb Days 3, The Wrap Up

Verb Days 3 got us so hooked that we’re already missing it! The 6 teams turned the office space into the perfect collaboration environment and filled the air with their creative vibes. Jokes echoed throughout the day. There were moments of panic when an app wouldn’t work, but also ‘Eureka’ moments when obstacles were defeated. In the end, we had lots of fun and some cool ideas with big potential!

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Here’s what they came up with.

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Verb Days 3: Live Updates

The Verb Days are here!
To help you get a glimpse of what we’re up to, stay tuned to this post. We’ll be sharing updates throughout the day.

1:30 AM We proudly announce that Verb Days #3 was a blast! Each application was different and so was each team’s presentation style. Laughter often ensued, but so did critical thinking, improvement suggestions and even new ideas.

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Verb Days 3: Teaser

Just a couple of days left until Christmas and everyone is getting all cozy.

Not at 4PSA though! We’re tuning our focus to the maximum, because it’s Verb Days again!

Verb Days, now at its 3rd edition, is an internal hackaton that we’re hosting every year before the winter holidays. In teams including both tech and non-tech people alike, we spend a full day to create and implement an application of choice. It’s an adventurous process that involves creative thinking, sharing ideas, laughter, coffee, healthy snacks and…coding. Lots of coding!

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The event lasts from early morning to midnight, but time flies fast when you’re having fun.

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Follow Your Passion, Whether for IT or…Tea!

You know what they say, businesses made with passion are the ones that make a difference. It’s the case for any industry, which got us thinking: how does passion for other types of businesses differ from our passion for IT?  What is it that drives others?

To explore this notion of passion, we’ve set out to learn the stories of people who are putting a shoulder to a very different wheel than ours. As of September this year, we’re thus organizing a series of monthly internal meetups called Labors of Hercules*.

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Brace Yourselves, Millennials Are Coming

The highly experienced but less tech-savvy baby boomer generation has been dominating the global workforce for some time now, but that’s about to change. Before you know it, the soon-to-retire boomers will be replaced by the ambitious, technologically savvy and collaborative millennials, who don’t remember a time without computers and smartphones. Growing up with laptops, Wi-Fi, 3G and social media, the digital world circulates through their system as they expect immediate access to information at all hours of the day.

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Three Things to Look For When Selecting Your Call Center Software Provider

Picture this modern-day scenario: a longtime retail company has run its own call center since inception, but recently because of the escalating costs and the need to create a better customer experience, management is planning to upgrade the tools that agents use in their day-to-day jobs. And nothing is more critical for a call-center, whether owned or outsourced, than the software platform used to communicate with customers and keeping track of those interactions. As a result, the company decides to shop for a suitable contact center software solution.

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Five Steps for Implementing the Cultural Shift Required by UC Systems

Over the last decade, email has become second nature to people all around the world. For businesses too, e-mail has been one of the primary means of communications for many years.

But today, email simply is not enough. Users and businesses altogether have been looking at complementary ways to communicate. Instant messaging, social media platforms, and think of just how much are employees starting to use their personal devices for business communications. This search often results in embracing state-of-the-art Unified Communications (UC) solutions.

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Improving Customer Experience in Banking with Unified Communications

The banking sector has been through a lot for the past 6 years. Starting with the 2008 financial meltdown and continuing with a perpetual lack of customer trust, the banking industry seemed to be on a continuous downward spiral.

Yet, there are signs that banks have finally learned their lessons and have managed to turnaround consumers’ confidence. The 2014 Ernst & Young Global Consumer Banking Survey shows that consumer confidence in banks has risen 50% versus previous year. The report goes on to state that this increase is not the result of consumers turning back to “normal” but rather the result of banks taking an active stance on building trust again. And this trust resides on customer experience.

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Why Businesses Need to Leverage the Power of the Cloud

Businesses today are increasingly migrating their digital resources and tools into the cloud for a variety of reasons. As such, it should be no surprise if the global end-user spend on cloud services will reach $180 billion by next year. It is bound to happen.

By the end of last year, more than half of U.S. businesses were already taking advantage of cloud-based tools. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits these technologies bring.

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Africa Is on the Brink of a Unified Communications Revolution

For quite some time, VoIP telephony and Unified Communications tools (voice, instant messaging, video calls, audio conference, and presence combined into a single communication stream) have proliferated on many markets, and now it appears as though Africa too is on the brink of this communications revolution. With technology evolving so fast, businesses in developing areas of the world are catching on to the need to deploy robust communications tools.

By taking advantage of both VoIP and UC, companies benefit from cost savings and increased functionality which, in turn, improve business processes and boost productivity.

As the number of reliable Internet connections increases, so does the number of businesses that can leverage IP telephony. With that in mind, let’s take a look at two countries in particular—South Africa and Nigeria—and how VoIP and UC are making an impact there.

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