Tag Archive for: cloud

Cloud Costs spinning out of control?

 

The debate over cloud costs has intensified as cloud platforms have become the primary focus for most IT deployments. Despite the significant growth in cloud adoption over the last decade, a considerable amount of technology remains non-cloud or on-premises.

Initially, it was believed that public cloud services would reduce the cost per bit of compute and storage resources and provide more account-friendly operating costs. However, while cloud costs can be classified as operating costs, they are still a significant expense. As a result, many companies are discovering that cloud resources are less cost-effective than their on-premises counterparts.

Nonetheless, cloud adoption has successfully accelerated the pace businesses operate and enable the rapid deployment of new services and digital products.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the cloud’s potential as a remote work and retail delivery solution. Additionally, cloud technology provides increased flexibility in purchasing compute and storage resources, allowing companies to procure more IT resources to support R&D, ongoing product development, and internal digital transformation initiatives.

 

“There is a newfound emphasis on the visibility of cloud costs”

Recent surveys and discussions with professionals have revealed that cost has become a new priority for cloud adoption. Organisations are interested in comparing the costs of cloud hosting with on-premises resources.

To quote Peter Drucker, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” The first step to understanding costs is to track and analyse them. Easier said than done. Many cloud services are still purchased in ad-hoc ways or by business lines operating in the “shadow IT” model. CEOs and CFOs are looking to put an end to this.

Cloud Cost Management (CCM) and Financial Operations (FinOps) tools have emerged to address this need for cost visibility. These tools offer sophisticated methods for measuring and managing cloud costs, including evaluating the impact on networking and security adjacencies. Additionally, managers would like to assign costs to specific business units for accountability purposes.

Cloud management companies like Flexera, Apptio, and Virtana are developing CCM and FinOps tools. CCM provides intelligent bill analysis across AWS, Azure, and GCP and alerts on unexpected changes that drive cloud spending, offering actionable saving recommendations. Flexera’s FinOps module integrates into the Flexera One platform, part of a comprehensive IT asset management strategy. Apptio focuses on understanding the operating costs in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and commitments to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) implementations. Virtana’s CCM offers ongoing cloud cost optimisation, uniquely emphasising balancing performance, risk, and cost.

While platform tools such as IBM’s Turbonomics and VMware’s CloudHealth provide some visibility into usage as it happens, they fall short of providing cost remediation information useful for finance and engineering teams to have cost-reduction conversations.

Emerging solutions focus on arbitrage between cloud offerings, and Kubernetes compute capabilities to reduce compute costs. CAST AI is a promising startup that helps organisations understand Kubernetes costs across various areas, including cost monitoring, security management, autoscaling, rightsizing, and spot instance automation. CAST AI has a unique business model in which it charges customers based on a percentage of the amount of money saved on compute costs.

 

“It’s not just cloud services, networking too”

 

The networking industry has recognised the potential to enhance the comprehension of cloud costs. Cloud networking companies like Aviatrix and Prosimo understand that networking is a critical enabler of the cloud. It can be leveraged to provide better visibility and management of cloud service access since cloud services are connected through networks.

Aviatrix’s CostIQ uses distributed telemetry to measure shared cloud network usage and assigns the results to the appropriate cost centres. Prosimo’s Full Stack Cloud Transit platform provides insights into application requirements and performance, which can be used to optimise cloud networking experiences and costs. Both companies are also working on other areas to maximise cloud expenses. We can expect new products from them soon.

Today, with many companies relying on a more intricate cloud operating structure that involves more cloud data, more cloud providers, improved cloud data management, and better cloud security, the financial consequences of daily decisions can significantly impact a company’s cloud bill and overall operating budget.

 

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Excelien partner with Zoom

Zoom was one of the most common words used in 2019. For many some older generations maybe the new MSN, the uptake wasn’t just businesses allowing users to continue WFH but consumers having access and meeting friends and family online.

Excelien is excited to have Zoom now part of our portfolio of vendors. We see Zoom as an easy-to-use, dependable and innovative platform for video-first unified communication, which also delivers phone, meetings, webinars and team chat.

The advisory services work with several vendors and continually analyse these but, Zoom is architected different, it’s the only platform which was built with video as its root foundation, this at its core is why customers like Walmart, Uber and Hubspot rely on this the reliability and scalability, not only that; Zoom also have a customer footprint in over 94% of countries around the world!

The common association with Zoom is video, which is true, but the video-first communications platform also offers:

Zoom has, and will continue to mould the way enterprise organisations globally communicate and connect. Zoom comprises all the tools you need into one simple platform – from 1:1 meetings to meeting rooms to large broadcasted webinars. It’s a seamless experience on desktop, mobile and conference rooms. With Zoom, companies have seen an 85% increase in video usage and VOIP six times more than traditional telephony – so people join fast and are more productive, and companies save money.

If you’ve come straight to this page, you may have missed how we work, Excelien has partnered with Zoom on an advisory partnership; this means, you have free access to our pre-sales team, consultants and 0% margin pricing.

  • What’s the most important priority to you with video collaboration?
  • What would you like to accomplish with Zoom, drive sales, expand the market or more?
  • What features are you currently using in your existing solution? What are some specific features you require but do not now have?
  • What do you do for IM and Presence today?
  • What are you using for voice today – on-prem vs PBX?

Excelien have a range of experts experienced in delivering Zoom, speak to one of the consultants and understand how we can help you in your journey.

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Excelien and RingCentral present: Enhancing the customer and employee communication and collaboration experience

Excelien has a long-established relationship working with RingCentral delivering UCaaS and CCaaS solutions within the finance industry. We’ve helped organisations consolidate global telecom estates to a single platform, revolutionise their contact centre and boost productivity and efficiency with RingCentral.

We look at how Fintech startups, as well as established banking, accounting, and insurance companies, rely on RingCentral to help them with the challenge of balancing cost, regulations, and confidentiality in a fast, ever-changing digital world. Excelien with RingCentral discusses how an all-in-one secure communications and collaboration platform gives organisations the opportunity to deliver a top-tier personalised experience while making significant budget savings.

Join this webinar on July 22nd at 10 am (BST) to discover why RingCentral is a secure, compliant, and unified communications solution built for financial services.

What will be covered?

– Drive user productivity and efficiency gains
– Consolidation of business communications into one single app
– Customise with market-leading integrations with your existing technologies
– Increase customer engagement and satisfaction
– Deliver competitive, quality customer service
– The highest level of security for financial data

Sign up here!

 

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Excelien Partners with Talkdesk

Excelien continues growing its vendor community partnering with Talkdesk, an enterprise cloud contact centre (CCaaS) that empowers companies to make customer experience their competitive advantage.

The partnership held the solution to the common problems our clients have endured. The ease of integrations, reducing costs, decreasing ramp-up time for the agent, improving employee satisfaction and having a platform that is straightforward to manage and doesn’t require specialists to operate. Talkdesk has already established a name within the CCaaS market with clients such as Tandem Bank, TAP Air Portugal, Trivago and IBM.

The challenge is that most contact centre technology out there today can’t meet these modern customer needs. Most were built 20+ years ago, before the digital revolution. These systems operate as channel silos, with little or no integration to CRM or other systems. They are inflexible, hard to adapt to the everchanging business needs and expensive to maintain. These systems lack innovation, so adopting new technology like AI is virtually impossible. And this isn’t just a problem with on-premises systems, its also an issue with first-generation cloud solutions.

Ease of Integrations

The fact we’re in an era where innovative collaboration and productivity tools are growing faster than ever, to be able to meet the demand for integrations quickly and easily is what IT teams need.

Gone are the days of getting in developers to create APIs, with Talkdesk AppConnect you’re able to extend capabilities with push-button integrations with over 100+ partners. AppConnect is recognised by Gartner as the industry’s first app marketplace for the contact centre.

AppConnect gives you the flexibility to test the integrations for 30 days for free, and then co-term with the monthly payments. The apps require no long-term commitment and plans can be modified, upgraded or cancelled at any time.

Reducing Costs

Understanding Cost Avoidance vs. Cost Reduction is the message we want our clients to understand. If the main focus is on what you’re paying now, you’ll be likely to be in a scenario of you get what you pay for, and potentially at risk not being able to scale for future growth.

With Talkdesk, we see that it addresses cost reduction in further areas such as automation through IVR and AI, agent attrition and missed call opportunities which helps your business build up more profit over time. We also look at how we can reduce operational costs, and unaccounted costs such as efficiency, self-service adoption, integration workflows, and disaster preparedness.

It’s about thinking long term.

The Stats Speak the Truth

In the world of sales, if you’re referred to someone or recommended a product you’re 72% more likely to purchase it. Talkdesk has some great accolades having the most and best reviews with Gartner, G2Crowd and Salesforce AppExchange

And being recognised by their clients as well as Gartner has resulted in Talkdesk to enter the Leader quadrant for the Contact Centre as a Service Magic Quadrant. Talkdesk is one of only three vendors appearing in both the North American quadrant and Western Europe Contact Center as a Service Magic Quadrant making Talkdesk an exceptional option for companies requiring an end to end solution for contact centres globally. Talkdesk is the most recent vendor to be in the leadership quadrant and the fastest company ever to make it into the leadership quadrant.

 

Improving Customer Experience

On average there are 7 stages of transition through the customer experience life cycle, and we look at how Talkdesk manages these, and how it minimises customer effort, boost customer satisfaction, maximise resources and ultimately generate revenue.

 

1 – Method of Communication

Customers are not the same as 10 years ago, they’ve shifted from how they traditionally got in contact, they expect to be able to contact you via IM, Whatsapp, Socials and some just don’t want to chase and want the company to contact them back at a convenient time.

Talkdesk provides access through all these contact channels whether its Web, Mobile, Social, Email, Visual/Video or Live Chat.

2 – CRM Integration

Customers expect a personal experience, and to do so, CRM integrations need to present context to the agent and contact centres with real-time information about customers, empowering your agent to have more intelligent and seamless conversations.

Whether that identification is their account number, email address or number, it can help quickly identify and address the customer, allowing more profound insights into what the call might be, and promptly personalise the callers information.

 

3 – IVR & Self-Service

We all have shortcuts to get around the IVR, such pressing 5 “if you’re planning to leave the service” (which would usually get answered quicker!). Talkdesk empowers the customer to use self-service and cut costs by freeing up agents.

As customers call in, the IVR can quickly distinguish customers needs and have them directed to specific agents. This frees up unnecessary time trying to guide the customer to the correct agent, the customer can speak to some who specialises in their topic. If a customer just needs to know their balance on an account or when a bill is due – that’s something an IVR can handle.

4 -Intelligent, Skills-Based Routing

Talkdesk wants to deliver exception customer experience, but how?

We connect the customer with the best available agents based on their skills, reducing interaction time, improving the quality of service and reducing re-queues. There is also the ability to provide real-time information to the customer about their wait time, queue position and options to opt for callbacks. The intelligent mapping of calls can prioritise high valued or high-risk accounts, getting them to agents as quickly as possible

5 – Efficiency Tools

Talkdesk generates efficiency for common tasks with tools like disposition codes or preview dialers, these can conserve time and improve agent utilisation and productivity.

Preview dialers allow outbound reps to have context prior to calling, and power dialers can decrease the time it takes to place calls and leave messages and can move seamlessly onto their next conversation.

Disposition codes help complete everyday tasks to help improve agent productivity by decreasing after-call work and allowing these to be easily indexed within the Talkdesk reporting.

6 – Reporting & Analytics

The Talkdesk dashboard allows you to gain real-time visibility and administration with real-time reporting and advanced analytics. Instead of worrying about code to building out your metrics, you have simple click functionality to create instantaneous dashboards to proactively run your contact centre, leveraging BI to uncover insights and optimise your team.

7 – Workforce Engagement

Beyond the dashboard and reporting, you want to engage your staff wherever the agents are located, whether they’re remote, based in different time zones or part-time during the busy periods such as Christmas. Talkdesk allows you to create the right balance between cost and service-level management. Talkdesk provides tools to forecast contact volume, schedule contact centre staff based on workload and plan for future events.

Talkdesk can evaluate & benchmark agent performance, which means they can adequately reward or promote agents with accurate depictions of their performance. To help with that, they can ensure compliance with call & screen recording.

 

Talkdesk for the Future

Excelien see Talkdesk as the future of contact centre services with the speed of innovation which Talkdesk is developing, being cloud-native, AI deeply embedded within the platform, an industry-unique App Ecosystem and agile development of new capabilities – it leaps ahead over its competitors.

And for our clients, Talkdesk is Customer-Experience obsessed, with one of the only vendors to deliver a 100% uptime SLA, achieve 98% CSAT rating from their customers and over 134% net retention.

Our cloud advisory team at Excelien are experienced in deploying a range of contact centre rollouts through every step of the journey, and our consultants can navigate you to see how Talkdesk can increase productivity, manage costs and move to a futureproofed solution.

 

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Dialpad – Goodbye Cord. Hello Future!

Excelien is excited with its latest partnership with Dialpad, a company making monumental moves in Silicon Valley and counts Netflix, Uber and Xero in their client base. Dialpad has already made its name in the UCaaS market for being the leading technology behind Yahoo Voice, Grand Central, and Google Voice. What came next is a Unified Communication and Contact Centre platform, which revolutionises the way companies operate. DialPad is entirely home-grown, created and developed for the cloud, meaning they can develop and issue the latest innovations at an accelerated pace compared to their adversaries, which would tend to rely on 3rd party products to piece together an offering. 

Integrate and Collaborate

Dialpad desired a service which worked the way employees worked – on any device and from any location. It originated with designing seamless integrations with all significant applications, with email systems like G-Suite and O365, Servicedesk integrations such as Zendesk and Jira, Collaboration tool integrations with Slack or Linkedin and CRM’s such as Salesforce and Hubspot – All within a single pane of glass. As Dialpad is a 100% cloud-based platform, it syncs voice, video, contacts, and more in real-time within the integrations, meaning Dialpad can be the core of the user.

Video Calling

The conception of simplicity and ease of use is the focus of Dialpad. An example is Uberconference (was created before Uber!) has no PINs, no software to download, which means no hassle. With features such as Call Transcription and Voice AI available in real-time, you can get even more out from your conference calls. Dialpad creates products focused around exceptional user experiences and simplicity is core to everything Dialpad do.

 

Voice Transcription

Have you ever experienced awkward silences on calls or video-conferences were users are writing down notes rather than listening or forgetting a key point from earlier? With VoiceAI before, throughout, and following every call. It is actively building to-do lists, finding answers to tough questions, and it’s discovering trends and insights that become common over time. As long as someone is talking within Dialpad, Vi is there making that conversation smarter and better.

Supporting Sales Teams and Agents

Dialpad Support and Sell offer innovative services for sales teams, contact centre agents and support staff, with the idea of simplicity at the core, users have a single platform with native integrations plus real-time coaching and suggestions. An example an agent can be on a call and real-time recommendations of how to answer the questions can pop-up and even highlighting previous conversations about topics related to the call. As data grows from your calls, the system will proceed to get more intelligent, empowering your agents further.

Excelien looks into the top 3 features of Dialpad Sell and Support.

1 – Dialpad help you identify who to call.

Dialpad maps the purchase intent and sentiment so Sales teams can identify who to call first. Dialpad looks at previous data to see if the prospect previously mentioned they had the budget, it was the right time, and isn’t using a competitor vs the one that said several competitors, and maybe a more competitive, longer sales cycle. Dialpad Sell helps save time, distinguish who to call, and know that it’s the right person to call.

2 – We help you know what to say.

Dialpad will save your users time on calls by taking notes for them. Providing real-time transcriptions they can reference, bringing up recommendations to questions they might not know how to answer, and even ensure they’re following the sales process or playbook you have in place. The goal is to help you understand what is happening in these conversations and to support your users in having better, smoother, and more viable sales conversations. Dialpad removes the “I don’t know moments”, ensure they’re following the playbook, and provide them with reminders on how to answer those tough questions around the competition or that new feature.

3 – We help you know what happened.

Everything post-call we refer to as Google Search for your conversations. All of your calls and indexed, searchable, and shareable. Want to know how often a competitor is named, or someone talks about that new product? It’s a few clicks away. Shortly, you’ll be able to build call libraries of entire calls or specific moments of calls to enable your team to learn from their colleague’s conversations and help your team learn from each other or share best practices. You’ll also be able to take all of this data with you and push it to a data studio to combine with other data sources if that’s of interest.

Dialpad Sell

Dialpad Support

Security and Compliance

Security will be part of any project, and the telephone system is no different. Dialpad provides a range of security features from single sign-on capabilities to automated user provisioning. Dialpad allows integrations for access management through SAML and SCIM, integrating into providers like Azure, GSuite, OneLogin, Okta, and more. Calls with Dialpad across the VoIP network, as well as in transit web requests is encrypted utilising TLS and application data that is permanently stored at rest uses AES 256-bit within Google Cloud Platform. Dialpad will support your organisation to meet GDPR compliance obligations through features such as retention policies, data subject access requests, and specific consent mechanisms. Dialpad offers customers a Data Protection Agreement (DPA) and is also a Privacy Shield compliant. 

Business Continuity and Call Quality

Dialpad sits within the Google Cloud platform on a split-cloud architecture with Data Centres in every region, so anywhere you are based, you are receiving the most reliable service and enterprise call quality. The capacity to move data centres upon calling is seamless to the end-user, so they’ll receive the same user-experience anywhere in the world they are.

Committed to Service

At the speed UCaaS and CCaaS are growing, Dialpad will not leave you behind – the customer support is fundamental to the Dialpad ethos. The natural growth for many of the trading and largest UC and CC vendors is they churn and burn, acquiring customers, but not giving organisations (especially the SMB market) the concentration and support they need to be thriving customers. Dialpad offers 24/7 end-user support, as well as a comprehensive professional services plan with a Customer Success Manager, a Technical Manager, and an Implementation Manager. Dialpad is an agile, fast-growing organisation that ensures customer benefit and satisfaction is at the top of our priority list, not merely getting the customer on the books.

 

Our cloud advisory team at Excelien are experts 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.

 Begin your 14 day trial with DialPad!

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Enabling your remote workforce with short term billing (3 Month Commit)

We genuinely hope that you and your co-workers remain safe and healthy during these unprecedented circumstances. As a leading advisory organisation, we have worked side by side with our eco-system of vendors within the network services and cloud communications space, alongside Masergy we have a created a unique offering to accelerate your virtual workforce strategy further. We have created a short-term offer with a minimum 3-month commitment, and available for immediate response to build a productive and secure remote workforce for your global company.

VPN Offer: Fast and Fully-Managed Remote Connectivity

Require secure connectivity over the public internet to enable your workforce? Masergy Networking as a Service (NaaS) Virtual Private Networking (VPN) offers a turnkey solution for securely connecting remote workers to your corporate WAN. Entrust Masergy for fast and fully-managed connectivity.

  • Get bulk VPN connections spun up within 24 hours
  • Employees can use their home internet securely by connecting directly into Masergy’s software-defined network for high-performance application delivery.
  • A global team supporting 24/7 network performance monitoring

Unified Communications Offer: Empower Remote Workers

Companies want a seamless transition from office to home and maintain the productivity of the workforce while working at home. Masergy’s remote collaboration solutions support your team to stay productive wherever they are and on any device. To collaborate effectively, your workforce needs a seamless experience and the same resources and communication options they have in the office. Masergy makes it easy for you to deliver a work-from-home business model.

  • Masergy’s Remote Productivity Suite includes face-to-face meetings over video, softphone, presence, chat, and even desktop sharing
  • UCaaS technologies are embedded into Masergy’s software-defined network, so users get high-performance application delivery

Cloud Contact Center Quick Deploy Offer: Enable Remote Agents

Ramp up remote agents in just one week using Masergy’s Quick Deploy Offer. Powered by Cisco Webex Contact Center, this solution cost-effectively implements critical cloud-based services to facilitate the world-class experience today’s customers have come to expect.

This offer includes:

  • Rapid installation that typically occurs in five business days from order to live service
  • A FREE softphone or you can continue using your existing end-points
  • Tiered service options for standard and premium agents
  • VoIP, PSTN, and fully managed services with 24/7 network performance monitoring
  • Free toll/local number access and PSTN call, respectively for the first 90 days

 

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, whether temporary or permanent.

 

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Excelien at Contact Centre Expo 2020

Excelien will be hosting one-to-one advisory sessions at #ContactCentre Expo, get a first-hand look at how companies are taking their customer experience to the next level by investing in and leveraging the productive capabilities of omnichannel marketing and automation.

We will have our consultants at hand to understand your goals and requirements, on which we’ll deliver an overview of the Contact Centre market. We currently work with 30+ contact centre providers, and we aim to ensure we connect you with you those who will meet and exceed expectations.

We support companies of all sizes to achieve their goals in Digital Transformation programmes, maximising value and minimising risk. We aim to deliver Digital Transformation Goals by empowering powerful collaboration and interaction throughout your company, allowing you to provide to your staff, partners, contractors and customers become more connected.

We’ll also throw in a £10 Costa voucher for each attendee!

If you’d like to arrange a advisory session on the day, fill in the below and we’ll be in touch with available sessions.

Register Today!

 

 

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UK Customer Service Survey

We commissioned a survey of over 2,000 consumers within the UK to understand what challenges people encountered when attempting to chat to a company on the phone and discovered that one in five people who call a company doesn’t actually get through.

 

Even worse is that 35% of the consumers surveyed that didn’t get through to someone were prospective buyers seeking information on products, attempting to create an account or make a purchase. Companies are consequently squandering a large number of inbound inquiries from potential customers who have gone out their way to call them directly.

Adopting Technology To Enhance Customer Service

Now it is not an industry secret make sure someone picks up the phone when a customer calls! We understand it can be difficult for assistants in a busy office or a hectic contact centre, but ensuring you have the appropriate technology in place can mitigate that pain. With the right technology, you can route calls to the first qualified person who can answer to the inquiry, regardless of the agents located whether they’re based at home, a remote office, a different country or even continent. 

However, the study also reports this:

  • When consumers do get through to someone and experience lousy customer service companies jeopardise losing them to a competitor, more commonly than not, more often than not, when they’re on the phone.
  • One in eight states they have begun researching for competing products or companies online while on a call, and a tenth has posted live on social media to label a company during a poorly managed call. The problem is more common amongst people aged 25-34.
  • Over a quarter have gone online while on a call to find competitors or complain.

You Only Get One Shot, Make a Great Impression

It’s crucial companies make a great first impression, and there’s only one chance and beginning that journey on the wrong foot can diminish any customer relationship for good. This is the primary reason it’s imperative to ensure each interaction counts. When customers are quickly steered to a suitably proficient agent who is qualified to manage their call stops them from being passed around to multiple agents and ultimately, getting frustrated. When customers are frustrated, they’re more inclined to switch to your competitor.

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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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