Industry Insight
Workplace by Facebook is a relative newcomer to the workplace collaboration category, but with marque customers like Walmart and Starbucks its gaining ground quickly on Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Today’s clients expect more than ever from the businesses that they connect with. It’s not enough for companies to simply give their consumers basic service over the phone.
In a world where businesses grow more alienated from their customers every day, the rise of AI and chatbots threaten to cut out human connection entirely.
How many times have you picked up a landline phone to communicate with a customer, client or colleague today? My guess is that most people would be able to count the number of times on one hand. The workplace in changing, and that means the way that we communicate at work is changing too.
Feeling Connected: Building your UCaaS strategy on the right foundations – Post webinar Q&A session…
Following on from the recent UC EXPO webinar in association with Gamma, there were some unanswered questions that came in from some of the attendees.
Quite clearly a workplace can’t address all the stresses and strains of earning a living, but knowing your employer is trying to help you achieve your career and business goals through investment in the best technology and well-designed spaces contributes positively to employee productivity.
Researchers have established that those who multitask a lot are better at switching between different tasks, because they do it regularly (practice). However, they do the task less well than those who are not distracted by irrelevant information.
As a SIP trunk supplier, we often keep an eye on what our customers are looking for in the VoIP marketplace, and free SIP trunks for testing and trials are probably the most requested.
Technological changes continue to progress at an unprecedented speed, influencing how workplaces function and evolve across Asia Pacific and the world. The proliferation of mobile technologies, along with a new generation of millennials entering the workforce, requires business leaders to address changing workers’ expectations.
Four years ago, the right to request flexible working became UK law. Since then, flexible working has become more prevalent, to the point that half of the UK workforce is predicted to work remotely by 2020.
As an increasing number of companies begin to support the trend of remote working, BYOD is on the rise. BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, allows organisations to empower their workers, by allowing them to use the devices they feel most confident and familiar with.
Slack is a workstream collaboration (WSC) platform designed to help make teams more productive. Under the hood exists a host of features that can help you take your personal workspace to the next level. Here are seven Slack hacks to help transform you into an expert user.
There are some factors that mark out groups that have the greatest success with virtual meetings: trust, reliability, belonging and emotional closeness.
Striving to do more with less is nothing new to most SMEs. Whether it’s maximising efficiency by empowering staff to work flexibly, or carefully plotting budgets to get the most from every last penny, it’s all part and parcel of the small business journey
The doors to the Excel Centre were opened once again for UC EXPO 2019, Europe’s largest unified communications and collaboration event, and it proved to be another year of fruitful discussions.
Webinar: There’s no future in service providers avoiding user complaints about poor app responsiveness and not meeting new requirements for rich communication and collaboration services. There’s no progress without the right foundations.
People’s experiences with customer service hotlines, hold queues, unhelpful advisors, and being passed endlessly from one person to the next. Often in the space of one interaction – have lowered customers’ expectations. This has resulted in phone calls evolving to become a last resort. The antidote, according to some tech-focused news spaces, is AI-powered customer services like chatbots.
Organisations are adopting Unified Communications (UC) – a combination of voice, video and messaging platforms around a shared IP-based infrastructure – to boost productivity and enhance collaboration.
In a world where we have so many outstanding collaboration technologies at our disposal, there are still traditional managers who think employees are only at work if at their office desk.
There are some basic do’s and don’ts that can be good to know before you set up a video conference in the meeting room or sitting by yourself. We will try to summarise them in eight bullet points.
As a business communications provider with a focus on helping people connect, we have announced the expansion of our unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offering to include EMEA, to help businesses positively revolutionise meetings and optimise employee productivity
A topical Q&A with a leading light within the unified communications community, discover more about what Dave's day to day consists of, why he chose UC as an industry, how to be successful, and his predictions for the future...
Microsoft Teams seems to have had a significant impact on the unified communications (UC) market since its release in early 2017, and Microsoft claims that Teams is the fastest growing product it has ever released.
A topical Q&A with a leading light within the unified communications community, discover more about what Brian's day to day consists of, why he chose UC as an industry, how to be successful, and his predictions for the future...
The ways organisations collaborate vary these days more than ever. The generational divide in the workplace has many employees working with a mix of device types and preferring different modes of interaction
UC EXPO 2019 is just around the corner, discover 7 top reasons why it should be two days in your calendar that should not be missed!
As the unified communications market moves away from on-premise installations and towards the cloud, smaller vendors have their chance to make a name for themselves in a rapidly growing space. However, despite the expansion of the industry, the number of vendors continues to fall.
A topical Q&A with a leading light within the unified communications community, discover more about what Dave's day to day consists of, why he chose UC as an industry, how to be successful, and his predictions for the future...
Across development methodologies there is a good amount of buzzwords that you hear used - and somewhat abused - frequently. One of the single most abused buzzwords is Agile.
A growing number of large organisations now use AV to support collaboration between staff and business partners, and also for daily communication with customers.
A topical Q&A with a leading light within the unified communications community, discover more about what Christopher's day to day consists of, why he chose UC as an industry, how to be successful, and his predictions for the future...
Consistently meeting your Incident Management KPIs and matching SLAs is something we all contend with on a monthly, weekly and sometimes daily basis. Meeting Incident Management targets is integral, but what targets should you aim for? And what metrics should you be focusing on? Let's have a look at KPIs: the classics, some new ones and some overall best practices.
There is a new generation in the workplace – Generation Z. These employees have grown up with devices like iPads being commonplace in their schools and they expect everything to be just a click away. From ordering Ubers to accessing any film on Netflix, this generation has an always on attitude. But how can businesses reflect this in the workplace to cater for their needs?
A topical Q&A with a leading light within the unified communications community, discover more about what Jonathan's day to day consists of, why he chose UC as an industry, how to be successful, and his predictions for the future...
Earlier this year, The TechSonic Team, stationed in South Africa was challenged with providing sound and video coverage for three large Zoom™ Room-enabled meeting spaces for a top law firm in South Africa. Team leader Eric had an idea that ceiling-mounted microphones would be perfect for the job.
What does the future of work look like? How will new technologies reshape our office life? And which tools will facilitate work-life balance while the border between private and job sphere is fading?
Q-SYS™ enables large meeting room integration across multiple corporate campuses. As one of the world’s fastest growing social media platforms, LinkedIn has become an essential part of how more than 500 million people build and curate their business networks.
The Workstream Collaboration (WSC) market is on track for massive growth. Recent data suggests that within three years, 70 percent of teams in the digital workplace will primarily use workstream collaboration platform apps to communicate, coordinate, cooperate, and connect.
With the continuing advancement in digital technology in office spaces, networked audio remains key to establishing unified communications and improving decision-making and collaboration in the global workplace.
Unified Communications (UC) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are terms that have now become increasingly common, but a relatively newer term hitting the industry agenda is Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).
A topical Q&A with a leading light within the unified communications community, discover more about what Tom's day to day consists of, why he chose UC as an industry, how to be successful, and his predictions for the future...
We have already seen several contact centre acquisitions in the unified
communications space as other players finally realise that UC and contact
centre should never have developed as separate products.
It is a given in most technology fields that if you task 25 engineers to
work towards a result, you will see at least 10 unique approaches emerge in
order to achieve that same goal. When looking to introduce automation by
deploying UC management tools, this is an important factor in the early days of
any technical engagement.
Dr. Tim Sharp, Chief Happiness Officer at The Happiness
Institute, explains: “I think the reason some can’t apologise isn’t actually
because they don’t like to be wrong, but because it’s seen as an inherent
character fault.”
Employees’ experience as consumers have changed their expectations
towards collaboration technology in their workplaces. As consumers, they
already expect easy integration and compatibility with other devices.
The topic of “Millennials in the workplace” has
been discussed by business executives for almost a decade now, as employers
began to appreciate that those born in the early 1980s to the mid-1990s had a
significantly different approach to work than the typical Baby Boomer and
Generation X employees.
Unobtrusive, outdoor-rated, digitally steerable arrays from
Renkus-Heinz have been installed as part of a high-end AV system for movie
nights, corporate messages, and meetings at PayPal HQ.
Remote work has experienced a huge boom in the last few
years, and people ditching traditional offices for the flexibility to work
where they please is certainly a trend that isn’t slowing down.
In recent years with increasing competition, quality of experience (QoE)
has become more and more important to service providers.
Despite the best-laid plans, holiday gift season doesn’t
always go as expected. No one knows this better than a retail contact centre
agent. This is the moment for those associates to
shine — saving the sale, the brand reputation and the chance to draw that customer
back for future purchases.
If there’s one thing SMEs can’t afford to do, it’s waste
hours in the day. As the old saying goes, time is money – and with limited
people resource to rely on, employees at smaller organisations can’t be tied up
on tasks that aren’t adding business value.
Enterprises
that are looking to improve collaboration and communication are increasingly turning
to the UC&C industry. According to Gartner, global spending on
UC&C will
reach $44.2 billion in 2021. As
medium sized and global organisations accelerate their adoption of unified
communications and collaboration technology, the industry needs to adapt and
exceed the rising expectations of end-users.
With the rise in such a variety of communication devices,
does the Contact Centre really have a future?
Test your unified communications pop culture knowledge, share your score with colleagues, and see if you could do with a visit to UC EXPO this May!
A major aim of many enterprises embarking on their digital
transformation journey is to reduce costs via new solutions and processes. And
the implementation of unified communications brings various opportunities for
such a cost reduction.
What will the data centre look like in 2019 and beyond?
That’s one of the most pressing questions facing data centres. The IT
environment continues to evolve rapidly to support changing business
requirements, making it difficult to conceptualise a data centre infrastructure
that can meet tomorrow’s demands.
AI won’t replace human meetings but, by taking care of the
routine and time-consuming, it will make them more productive, inspiring and
inclusive, writes Peter Jackson, CEO of Bluescape.
Here are some of the best business collaboration ideas for
both inside and outside of the office, skyrocketing business growth along the
way!
More UK customers are buying online than any other country in the world. This means the rise of customers interacting with faceless companies that have little to no human interaction and the need to rely on Twitter for complaints. But for these organisations, customer service is actually more important than ever.
Local phone calls are still the most effective way for a
business to speak with its customers, regardless of their age and despite the
growing popularity of emerging communications technologies. That’s the headline
finding of our new survey of US consumers, which reveals that nearly two-thirds
(60%) prefer picking up the phone to receiving text messages when it comes to
communicating with businesses.
Unify Square recently shared some of the biggest learnings from their
customers who were in the midst of piloting Microsoft Teams. One of the major
areas of focus centered on Microsoft Teams governance, compliance, and
security.
Five Benefits of Desktop as a Service from VMWare. As
cloud-based solutions become more accessible, many organisations are investigating
the transition from physical desktops towards desktop as a service.
Bradlee Allen from Fuze discusses the importance of
flexible working and not creating barriers for communication within organisations.
With fewer people commuting to a traditional office every day of the week, how
should you re-evaluate productivity?
When I was younger, I was taught to respect my elders and
yet in 2018, we don’t appear to respect anyone. We’re expected to converse with
machines and not get frustrated when the machine doesn’t understand our response.
When enquiring personally at my bank, I’m told to go online and solve the
problem, rather than the enquiry just being handled there and then.
For many of those in traditionally office-based roles, the notion
of the workplace is changing, employees are no longer slaves to their desks and
restricted by desktop landline phones. Digitalisation, including the increasing
use of and reliance on smartphone and apps, plus ubiquitous connectivity,
low-cost data services and the portability of traditionally cumbersome
hardware, have helped pave the way for new, flexible means of working, and
agile, mobile workforces.
When choosing communications and
collaboration technology, a key factor is the user experience (UX). This includes a well-designed user interface
(UI) to enable intuitive collaboration. The
UI comprises all the visual elements used to interact with conferencing
platforms - from screens to pages, buttons and icons.
If you sometimes wonder what your communications team actually does, apart from sharing corporate news, earnings announcements and dealing with the odd crisis you may want to think again. Often viewed as the dark horse of the business, internal communications, the wizards with words have the ability to transform your organisation and employee engagement for the better.
The diverse classroom settings of education are well
schooled in enabling digital teams to build and share knowledge easily, and in
catering for the widest range of need. What lessons do they hold for
interactive technology in the corporate workplace?
Education providers need to deliver top-class teaching in
modern facilities if they are to attract fee-paying students. Steve Montgomery
reports on the refurbishment of the Clerici building on the Oxford Brookes
site.
There’s more to calculating the total cost of ownership
(TCO) for communications systems than you might think. Here’s what you need to
know and how unified communications as a service (UCaaS) can drive your
communications TCO down.
The rise of social, mobile, data and cloud technology has transformed
every aspect of our personal and business lives, making them increasingly
connected and digital. We live in what is known as the digital era. One area
that has seen deep transformation is the workplace. Indeed, gone are the days
when the workplace was a physical space employee occupied during regular office
hours. Today’s always connected instant access environment has blurred the
lines between the physical office and the place where work actually happens.
Elaine Murray interviews Zach Katsof, Director of UC and
Microsoft Teams advocate at Arkadin, about tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams
deployment in enterprises.
Microsoft Teams is the company’s fastest growing business app of all time. A messaging and online meetings solution, Teams simplifies connections and collaboration inside your organisation. BlueJeans brings modern, trusted, secure video calling to popular tools and services so people can meet from anywhere, from any device. By integrating their video conferencing platform with Teams, they’re helping tailor processes, increase teamwork and productivity.
Helen Lancaster from Arkadin interviews Paul Ewasuik from Zoom.ai in the run-up to their joint presence at this year’s Gartner Digital Workplace Summit.
It’s hard to believe that less than 50 per cent of CRM sale updates actually make their way into the CRM, but that’s what a recent article on SalesforceBen revealed about how automatic logging of activity into Salesforce can improve data quality.
Within the span of a decade, the smartphone, followed by smart communications, has become so pervasive in the modern social fabric that it has become common wisdom that the traditional workspace needs a digital overhaul. Trends driven by the cloud and social communities, which gave rise to working styles that are increasingly agile and flexible, have even led to the ideation of the bleisure concept
Good question! This is something I have been asked a lot in the past when companies are rolling out a new system or making an organisational change. “Surely, we just need to let our employees know that the change is coming, and provide training?”
Yesterday's inflexible IT infrastructure is providing diminishing returns. It’s relatively costly, and employees are challenged to communicate, collaborate and respond to customers as quickly as they need. As digital technology transforms the way services are delivered, the imperative now is to have the ability to join the dots between any number of communication platforms and information access points.
In a world of sensitive data and tightening regulations, discover what you should do as an organisation!
The saying “the customer is always right” is one that has been drilled into those who work in customer service for as long as we can remember. Initially coined in the early 1900’s by pioneering retailers including Harry Gordon Selfridge, Job Wanamaker and Marshall Field, it placed great emphasis on why businesses should always aim to improve the customer experience.
What does the remote office look like? You are in a comfortable place, whether it’s at home, a coffee shop or a work hub, with a cup of tea and your favorite music playing. These days, having a single office isn’t so common anymore.
Collaboration is key for driving business forwards. But, enabling collaboration across different generations of workers is a challenge nearly every business will face. From Baby Boomers, to Millennials and Gen Xers, the requirements they need in workplace and the way they interact with technology can be vastly different.
Demand for smarter and more intuitive ways of working are on the rise. We now want to connect with colleagues easily, regardless of time zone or location. As a result, many organisations are adopting Unified Communications (UC) and collaboration tools, which deliver the productivity boosting and collaboration enhancing benefits businesses want.
There’s an unguarded doorway into your organization that by-passes perimeter security and puts customers’ personal information and employee records in jeopardy. While your IT department focuses its energy on preventing direct hacking attacks or email phishing scams, hackers have found another way in –it’s invisible, yet in plain sight.
In today’s digital-first era, it’s not surprising that more and more people are disinclined to pick up the phone, especially when it seems that the majority of calls tend to come from telemarketers or scammers. Additionally, many companies are increasingly turning to chatbots, virtual assistants and social media to interact with their customers.
The advent of cloud computing was a huge inflection point in the history of technology. It has led to increasingly software driven businesses – gone are the days of bulky hardware, brick style mobile phones and saving data onto floppy disks
As the workplace continues to evolve, we see new technologies and services entering the business environment all the time. The office of the future is being shaped by factors like flexible working hours, shared information, and cloud technology. How can businesses that depend on voice, messaging, presence, and collaboration better utilise technology to support employee productivity, irrespective of location and device?
The inexorable advance of technological progress. Think smartphones, easily portable laptops and tablets which let you work anywhere. Working on projects in real time with colleagues connecting remotely from the other end of the planet. Surely with such advances and conveniences we must be entering one of the most productive eras in history?
The cloud has transformed the way businesses operate, allowing flexible working hours and improving collaboration between employees. It has boosted productivity and communication, giving employees the opportunity to participate more, organise their teams and delegate tasks to individuals in a more efficient manner.
The vSolution MATRIX solution from WolfVision represents a significant step forward in learning space design, enabling intuitive control, distribution, and sharing of video and audio between multiple workstation monitors using multiple Cynap, and Cynap Core units connected using network infrastructure.
In this blog, we run through the steps that businesses need to take to put them on the path of true communication transformation, enabling them to create far more engaging customer and business experiences.
There was a time when IT systems were formed of discrete islands, invariably unconnected, and therefore only partially productive. Tools were chosen to help staff do their jobs. However, their selection didn’t necessarily take into consideration whether they would help to get the job done in a way that matched consumers’ actual service preferences.
Q&A with Michael Affronti VP Product - Fuze, Michael shared his insight as to how AI can lead to smarter collaboration and how Fuze can help you to embrace collaboration better in your organisation using reliable, scalable digital technology.
The introduction of GDPR legislation marks a crackdown in terms of where data is stored in the cloud, with stricter fines for businesses in breach of those regulations. However, a recent report by security firm Blue Coat found that 98% of cloud-based applications do not comply with GDPR legislation. It’s a combination of human error and lack of visibility or control over applications, and shadow IT or shadow data that is the largest risk factor for security breaches and non-compliance.
Who would have thought that in 2018, with all the technological evolution's we have already lived through in the past 10-15 years, from Cloud Computing, Smartphones, Social Media, Drones, Big Data, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet Of Things (IOT) that customer experience could still be slow, put work on the customers shoulders and often let customers down.