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3 Ways to Lower Costs in Healthcare with Unified Communications

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Escalating costs in healthcare has been a constant headline topic for years. So much so that worldwide famous economists, Robert S. Kaplan and Michael Porter both tackled the healthcare cost problem by suggesting the activity-based costing method. The main pillar of this method is streamlining operations. Studies show that doctors spend 25% of their time in direct patient contact while another 24% is spent communicating with fellow colleagues. 24%! This is a huge percentage that no doubt could be lowered by employing smarter communication tools.

As such, healthcare providers, both large and small must constantly look to take advantage of new communication infrastructure enhancements. And many of them, if they haven’t already deployed them, are looking towards Unified Communications solutions.

Eva Blue - Peaceful Hearts Doctor, San Francisco
© Eva Blue – Peaceful Hearts Doctor, San Francisco

 

Collaboration Software: Impressive Results on Business Productivity

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Business collaboration is that elusive Holy Grail of corporate executives. Blamed whenever a project fails or derails (96% of executives blame workplace failures on lack of it), hailed as the key to success whenever somethings works, every business planning cycle takes into account how to improve the way employees collaborate. Yet, since collaboration software or enterprise social networks stepped into the world, improving how we work is closer to reality.

In fact, in a recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, 86% of businesses indicated that online collaboration software was either “important” or “somewhat important”. Compared to 52% in 2012 and 75% in 2013, it’s fairly obvious that businesses are increasingly turning toward such solutions to bolster productivity, streamline business processes, and encourage collaboration as much as possible.

To keep up with this interest level and likely sales opportunities, service providers should consider adding collaboration software to their portfolios.

Improving Organizational Efficiency

World Cup Football on the Edge and the Need for a Resilient Contact Center

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The United States might be known for many things, but the prowess of its men’s soccer team is not one of them. This is the reason why many football enthusiasts around the world were puzzled when John Brooks’ header made it passed the Ghanaian goalie in the 86th minute of the World Cup game, giving the Americans a 2-1 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

It was an upset to say the least. And Americans across the country took to Twitter to celebrate en-masse, indicating a large U.S. fan base for the Brazil-hosted event, as well as a hit for social media platforms. Twitter reported 4.9 million tweets sent during the U.S. vs. Ghana match. The latest U.S. vs. Portugal also brought a flurry of activity on Twitter when Portugal’s Varela managed to equalize the score in minute 90+5′ 🙂

In The Company of Strong Teammates

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For the past three years, 4PSA’s girls cycling team mounted the podium in the women’s category at the Skoda Velo Challenge. We have a dedicated corner in our open space filled with the trophies they brought home. This is a good motivation to train hard every year, because maintaining a top place is not an easy task. And now we’ve raced our bikes in the Baneasa forest once again.

For those of you who do not know what Skoda Velo Challenge is, here’s the short story: it’s a relay cycling race opened for people working at the same company. We team up to compete against other companies in the same field of work or in the general classification. It’s basically a fun day in the woods, without computers and tasks, but with deadlines to meet. Well, you do need to beat the other competitors’ times, don’t you?

Winning Does Not Come Easy, But Feels Great

With only two girls willing to join the ranks this year, we took a different approach. We entered the race with two teams in the mixed competition. Team Hubgets and Team VoipNow, each made of three boys and one girl, lined up at the starting grid, along with 81 teams from other companies. Team Hubgets relied on stronger riders and aimed high. Team VoipNow was all about the fun of it.

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Transforming Contact Centers with VoipNow

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Companies today understand the importance of differentiating their businesses from the competition’s by offering customer service that is second-to-none. This imperative is supported by recent research, which indicates that more than half of customers will take their business elsewhere in the aftermath of a negative experience with a brand.

When companies decide to enhance customer service delivery, their decision makers often first look at contact centers. Since contact centers serve as the human extension of brands, they are the primary interface with key targets and, therefore, of paramount importance in retaining customers or improving relationships with them.

As a result, many businesses choose to deploy industry-leading contact center solutions, many of them cloud-based, to bolster their customer service offerings. And this means that business is good for contact center providers.

Service providers catering to these businesses need to stay on top of industry trends and add to their portfolios those solutions that ensure their customers get all the functionality they want. Cloud communications platforms are a common solution for several customer service key trends.

3 Ways for Service Providers to Benefit from IaaS Market Trends

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Cloud computing market is no longer a trend or a niche subject. Cloud seems to be here to stay and is slowly becoming the new playing field, shaping up industries as it grows and forcing them to adapt.

In a series of articles we’ll investigate how the cloud computing market is segmented, its growth rate and also what this whirlwind evolution means for service providers that focus on SMBs.

How Cloud Communications Help Create a Holistic Customer Experience

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By 2020, customer experience will matter more than price and product in determining consumer purchases. A strong and sobering fact for most companies. Thanks to the rise of the digital world, customers now have more choices when it comes to brand selection. Following a bad experience with a company, consumers are able to go online and spread the word about their poor experience. And this experience soon leads the way in which other consumers will make their purchase decisions. Because of this, many forward-thinking businesses are focused on cultivating an environment leading to positive customer experiences.

Deciding to pay more attention to improving customer service, many contact center decision makers are embracing the fact that customer experience needs a holistic approach. Customers no longer tolerate companies living and acting in silos. In fact, an omni-channel customer experience stands out as one of the top trends affecting how customers perceive their interactions with a specific company.

The App That Won Spring Race I

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Today we have a guest post written by the first winners of the Spring Races online hackathons. Enjoy!

Hi. We are Adriana and Paul, the team that won 4PSA’s first Spring Race.

Cloud for a better life, the motto said. We haven’t clouded so much, but we did try to improve someone’s life. We started by thinking about the spring of all bright ideas – education (high-school, in particular).

Our application, EduSoft, is designed to bring the 21st century into our country’s education management. The software offers its target users (students and teachers) a collection of integrated apps designed to fulfill specific needs. These functionalities are incrementally described below.

Winner App of Spring Race I

Spring Race II Data Mining

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Time for Spring Race II, a new chance to win another US $1000 prize!

The same terms and conditions apply, so we’ll spare you the how-to-enter-the-race details. What’s even more important than meeting the May 12th, 24:00 deadline is that you submit an original solution, designed and implemented for this competition. This is a mandatory condition to enter the race, so please keep it in mind. And of course, register your team first using this form.

Relevant People Data Mining

LinkedIn is used by millions of professionals in order to find potential business partners, new customers or talents for recruiting. While technically it is easy to search LinkedIn, even humans have trouble identifying the profiles that better match a set of criteria. For example, people with the longest LinkedIn profiles are not necessarily the best matches.

You must create an app that is able to identify and assign a score to the LinkedIn profiles based on input information. This input must be provided by the user, therefore the app must ask as many details as possible about the desired profile in order to find the best match. The app must mine LinkedIn and present a list of potential candidates ordered by a match score.

Enter the Spring Races
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