8×8 – Transforming the Future of Business Communications

As Excelien continues to grow its vendor eco-system becoming working with 8×8 as one of its fasting growing partners. 8×8 has offered a solution to all shapes of companies from SMB to Enterprise, from finance to legal to public and globally across 100+ countries. 8×8 can deliver unified communication services as well as contact centre rather than piecing various platforms together, eliminating silos and managed from a single UI. We look further into our partner 8×8.

8×8 is remodelling the future of business communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of voice, video, chat, contact centre and enterprise-class API solutions driven by one global cloud communications platform.

 

8×8 is recognised industry-wide by experts such as Frost & Sullivan for “Innovation in CCaaS and UCaaS”, IDC for as a significant player for CCaaS and UCaaS, Gartner as Magic Quadrant Leader for eight years consecutively and verified by Tolly as the provider with the highest call quality at 4.2. The accolades carry on with recognition from Deloitte, Silicon Valley Top 150, IHS, Infonetics Research and Forbes.

8×8 enables workforces worldwide to connect individuals and teams so they can collaborate faster and work smarter. Real-time analytics and intelligence provide businesses unique insights across all interactions and channels so they can delight end-customers and accelerate their business.

8×8’s hosted UCaaS and CCaaS solution enables businesses to swiftly, efficiently and reliably migrate telephone systems to the cloud. Unifying communications in the cloud on 8×8’s global communications platform, you can enhance customer satisfaction and external and internal collaboration regardless of location.

8×8 removes information silos to reveal vital, real-time intelligence across all clouds, applications and devices to increase individual and team productivity, customer experience and business performance.

8×8 has security and compliance at the forefront, ensuring it’s a fitting solution across all verticals from finance to the public sector to legal. 8×8 has 15 data centres globally, and both data sovereignty and GDPR compliant. 8×8 also offers voice recording and storage functionality to help MiFID II regulated customers meet their regulatory obligations.

8×8 guarantees high reliability and business continuity by delivering its cloud-based communications through the use of secure, fully redundant data centres. SSAE 16 certified, these top-tier data centres are placed in geographically diverse locations around the world. More than a million users rely on the 8×8 to reduce complexity and cost, accelerate high performance and enhance customer experiences.

Our cloud advisory team at Excelien are experienced in a range of Unified Communications and Contact Centre rollouts. Please speak to one of our cloud consultants today to see how we can increase productivity, manage costs and move to a futureproofed solution.

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Why move to SD-WAN?

If your company has a presence across multiple locations, the term SD-WAN should have come across your desk.

As companies move away from traditional compute to the Internet and the cloud, the conventional way of building WANs has become outdated. Costs for MPLS have been too expensive, service configuration commonly known for their poor punctuality and lengthy deployments. Companies have had over-compensate on their capacity, or limit performance due to inadequate bandwidth. 

 

SD-WAN acts to address the problem with smart routing for the right application. This is achievable as SD-WAN creates a virtual overlay over the underlying data services, distributing the upper protocol stack from the network. All networks have some independence from the underlying data service. It’s what allows us to run IP across Ethernet as efficiently as we do across MPLS.

 

Benefits of SD-WAN

1) Business Efficiency 

Deployment timescales are drastically reduced with the agile deployment of WAN services, such firewall and bandwidth. This means sites with no IT staff can roll-out services to branches without local IT staff. Companies can also benefit from enhanced agility with the capability to increase and reduce bandwidth based upon demands without the need for lengthy configurations, more often than not with the click of a button.

2) Commercial Rational

SD-WAN delivers firms an added layer of reliability, assuring that internet connectivity (cable, DSL, and Ethernet) is widely accessible and fast to roll-out. This can be achieved at a margin of the cost of a similar MPLS circuit, delivering a secure and reliable WAN service which is inexpensive and within constrained budgets.

3) Optimal Cloud Architecture

SD‐WAN augments networks to effortlessly and efficiently connect to cloud-based applications. It eradicates the backhaul penalties of conventional MPLS networks providing secure, low latency, high packet delivery (FEC), high‐performance pathways to the cloud. Implementing SD-WAN will increase the end-user experience with cloud and SaaS-based applications. 

4) Effortless Management and Adoption

Speed is the principal advantage of SD‐WAN, it makes implementing WAN services quick and uncomplicated. SD‐WAN solutions are incomplex to roll-out and offer traffic monitoring and automated setup, making them simple to handle.

5) Move to Hybrid WAN

The common myth is if businesses have already invested into MPLS for branch offices, it’s not necessary to roll-out SD-WAN. But, the advantages of operating a hybrid network potentially is something to have you rethinking your strategy. Businesses can seamlessly deploy SD‐WAN solutions without modifying the current MPLS network. Companies can migrate traffic increases toward a more inexpensive Internet bandwidth.

It’s common knowledge that Cloud technology transformed the industry for many organisations, the ability to deploy almost instantly, adaptability and customisation at your fingertips at an economical price; SD-WAN is no different. SD-WAN is shifting the network paradigm to deliver enterprises what they need and when for the ability to take full advantage of modern computing. The actuality is that companies without SD-WAN are not performing at their optimal level. It’s like only using 30% of your brain; imagine what can be accomplished if you utilise the other 70%. 

6) How to execute that shift from 30% to 100%

Our team of SD-WAN experts are experienced from delivering all kinds of solutions from a small store with multiple national stores, moving away from broadband and the pains associated with changes for their busy season such as Christmas that take up to 2 weeks. Or a global asset management firm where it was imperative to have that split second advantage over their financial competitors – Get in touch for a complimentary SD-WAN advisory session!

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How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will revolutionise the future of Contact Centres

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has never been higher with current spend more than $35.7 billion in 2019 and predicted to more than double by 2022 to $79.2 billion. 

Excelien looks into how AI will make an impact in 2020 in the Contact Centre space, looking into growing trends and future predictions.

Increasing your AI-focused workforce 

Organisations that embraced AI and ML ahead of their competitors will be in a prime position. They will have their data sets in place and skills within the workforce to a point where they can begin to drive the results out at scale.

Research by McKinsey illustrates that up to 58% of companies have implemented at least one AI capability into a process or commodity in at least one function or business unit, an increase of 47% in 2018.

The importance of AI and ML will change from cost minimisation exercises and operational productivity to focusing more on growth projects.

AI and ML will continue to deliver automation and operational efficiencies, though 2020 is set for companies to deploy AI in ways that support business advancement.

Chatbots increasing the bottom line and helping agents

Automating suggestions of relevant products and service resolutions to the agents at the pace of the conversation is the most common way that chatbots are being used more productively in contact centres.

Chatbots are known as the most common form of AI. There are more uses for AI within Contact Centre and as AI matures and continues to embed into more technologies such as self-service, interactive voice responses (IVRs) and analytics systems, the more data, AI and ML will have to grow.

AI is continuously growing in the contact centre signifying a shift from a “nice to have” to a technology meriting of substantial investment.

The silo mentality – The “unknown” reason for poor customer service

In the common contact centre, silos will exist at the individual agent level, team level, senior level and across the business, with each level having little or no idea what’s occurring beyond the immediate co-workers.

AI solutions will rapidly develop, and particular silos of data inside the contact centre will be consolidated with data sources across the business to produce more precise and improved results.

Customer-focused businesses will realise that this adaptability and integration with a broader spectrum of AI solutions can be a vital key to their success and retention of customers.

Contact Centres will combine their knowledge alongside AI

When customers call into the call centre, customers expect to have answers – and with AI they won’t have to. AI has a significant function in assembling the collected data pool within the organisation to deliver results faster and more efficiently.

Moving into 2020, we’ll frequently recognise AI connect the data gaps among cloud-based communication solutions and contact centres, enabling consumers to receive and benefit from the information of various departments within a business in real-time.

It includes the conception of virtual assistants and the use of video applications to enhance the outcomes and promptness of customer experiences.

Enhance your data with better management

When we think of AI now, attention is drawn commonly to self-driving smart cars, Apple’s Siri or Amazon Echo, but 2020 will see a greater focus on AI and how organisations utilise its most expensive commodity, data.

Using AI and ML, businesses can gain more profound insights into their data give logical clarity and direction to make more informed decisions. 

Ultimately, guiding the business into the future, faster and quicker.

In summary, the journey for AI has only just begun for many organisations; however, to reap the rewards, organisations will need to look at significant investments and not the short-term goals. In 2020, there will be an increased need for data engineers to meet the AI and ML demand for an evergrowing market. 

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