Take a look around you the next time you’re sitting in a café. Chances are nearly everyone you see will be glued to an Internet-connected device of some sort that is producing heaps of data – be it through emails, phone calls, social media or Unified Communications (UC) applications. Ever thought about the role that such an amount of personal information can play in the business world? It’s quite huge.
If you want to learn how not to implement collaboration software, here’s the perfect hypothetical situation: a mid-sized company is looking to enhance the knowledge sharing and productivity of its employees. As a result, the firm settles on a collaboration solution and the IT department has the task to implement the platform.
Imagine this scenario: a lawyer and a client, separated by thousands of miles, need to decide if they’re going to accept a settlement by the 5 p.m. deadline. They planned on connecting over the phone at 4 p.m. to come to a decision, but the client is too busy with another meeting. Thankfully, with the help of Unified Communications, they are able to connect via instant messaging and discuss the settlement (without having to leave the meeting), reaching a decision before the deadline passes.
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.