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.
We have just released VoipNow 3.5 Beta. It’s been a long journey, but the first beta of the new version is finally here, better than ever.
It contains over 80 core improvements designed to help you win the SMB market such as upgraded architecture, improved UI, better PBX with support for WebRTC, call encryption, and a lot of other enhancements that simplify the operation of large deployments. It also comes with over 100 bug fixes, most of them related to the updated architecture.
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.
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.
Imagine this: two employees located in separate offices have only an hour left to meet the deadline of a critical project. Instead of settling for the outdated approach of sending countless emails back-and-forth, they leverage the company’s communications and collaboration tools, such as audio conferencing and instant messaging, to conduct a much more effective conversation and strike a business deal in time.
This is very much today’s reality, as people are simply not as attached to email as they used to be. In fact, one could argue we are witnessing the demise of the golden age of email.
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.
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.
There is no question that Unified Communications solutions are good for business. But it’s often understated that UC solutions can have a great impact on the environment too. UC tools are all about connecting people and making their lives as easy as possible through smart deployment of technology.
Consider the following two aspects and you’ll see where I’m going with this.
Virtual Meetings Do Pay Off
With the power of UC solutions to unite business partners around the globe at a moment’s notice, in many cases in-person meetings are no longer the necessity they once were. Rather than having international business partners travel to a specific location to negotiate, consuming a lot of resources and time in the process, partners can now call from anywhere they are, with the same personalized, seamless interactions they would have in real life. Add to that the recording capabilities of the best UC software, and you will get an even more powerful means of following up on meetings.
Last year, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made the headlines when she announced that her employees would no longer be able to work from home. Some industry pundits speculated as to whether that meant the end of remote jobs. A few months later however, Dell CEO Michael Dell announced his intention to enable half of his 14,000 workforce to work from home. At the time of his announcement, 20 percent of his team were already working from home.
So, while the jury is still out whether Yahoo fares better or not, Dell’s decision merely expanded what already proved to be a good decision: in 2012, thanks to its remote working policy, the company saved $14 million—and 6,735 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. It seems that offices will soon be a thing of the past, or at least will need to be re-imagined, as more and more companies are shifting to flexible working policies.
With technology advancing so fast, it’s often a wonder that the process of delivering education is still a piece of the twentieth century. It’s true that the world of online universities and learning websites from Coursera to Kahn’s Academy and other MOOCs is taking off, but many traditional schools, high-schools and universities are still stuck with paperwork when it comes to collaboration, and to simple voice when it comes to communication. Education should be at the forefront of what tech has to offer.
Some schools are making inroads into how to leverage technology. For example, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) provides interactive video courses for K-12 schools across North Carolina. Students from across the state can collaborate in project teams and class discussions. Meanwhile, NCSSM teachers monitor the class in real-time and assess student learning. Yet, such schools are the exception, not the norm. The 2011 CDW Unified Communications Tracking Poll found that only 17% of higher education has implemented some of the features that are part of Unified Communications.
