Author: matt

Software-defined wide area networks, a software approach managing wide-area networks, offers ease of deployment, central manageability and reduced costs, and can improve connectivity to branch offices and the cloud.

With major shifts in the communications market towards SaaS (software as a service) and public cloud platforms, businesses are finding that traditional WAN (Wide Area Network) technology no longer provides them with a robust and reliable mechanism to support application performance and connection security.

Common challenges with traditional WAN technologies that support new cloud/SaaS applications include;

• Slow/poor user experience as a result of data passing back and forth through the data centre multiple times.
• Increased WAN costs due to increased demand for bandwidth, guest WIFI access etc.
• Diversely located workforce/branch locations increasing complexity and size of network.

To manage the demands of a modern multi-site business, you need a different architecture that enables local internet breakouts at every location for direct access to cloud services.

SD-WAN (Software-defined WAN) is a new approach to network connectivity that lowers operational costs and improves resource usage for multisite deployments.

Network administrators can use bandwidth more efficiently and dynamically ensuring the highest level of performance for WAN network reliability, agility and critical applications performance without sacrificing security or data privacy.

SD-WAN traffic will be 29 percent of business IP WAN traffic by 2022

In summary, the key advantages of SD-WAN include:

• Improved business application performance and increased network agility.
• Optimising the user experience and efficiency for SaaS and public cloud applications.
• Reduced costs with transport independence across MPLS, 3G/4G/5G LTE, etc.
• Simplified operations with automation and cloud-based management.

Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’

If you would like to learn more about how Evoke can help you further understand the benefits of SD-WAN and improving your business WAN/network, please get in touch with our lovely sales team by dialling  01509 278278 or if you prefer, you can email the team at hello@evoketelecom.local

Do you know that Evoke can provide a fabulous audio marketing solution for your telephone system whether you are using VoIP or traditional lines?

At Evoke we believe that a happy caller increases your likelihood of success. ‘Dead time’ where your customers wait to be transferred to a department or to speak to a contact is a perfect opportunity for communicating key sales messages and important information such as out of hours support and Christmas opening times, whilst entertaining your customer in a positive and professional manner.

Click here to give you some ideas for great Christmas message and music combinations. Simply scroll to the bottom and have fill your office with festive cheer!

For the month of November, we are offering a 20% discount on all published prices.

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Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’

If you would like more information on how Evoke can help you maximise sales over the festive period or any other telecoms consumables (our new Avaya headsets are selling like hot cakes!!), please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Our expert team can be contacted at hello@evoketelecom.local or 01509 278278.

Microsoft has revealed the design of their long-awaited Surface Duo, a dual-screen Android folding phone, which can be opened down the middle like a book.

The Surface Duo will have two 14.2 centimetre displays that can be unfolded to create a small tablet device which uses Google’s Android instead of Microsoft Windows, and it’s just 4.8mm thin.

The Surface Duo has A 360-degree hinge allows the screens to close together to form a protective case, or fold back to be use as a palm-held device. The phone can also be switched into landscape mode and used as keyboard and screen setup, like a laptop, or as a game’s controller.

Microsoft says it’s committed to dual-screen devices because they allow people to get more done on the go.

Both screens can run different apps simultaneously, allowing the user to make calls while running a note-taking app, for example.

Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay says Microsoft has been working on the Surface Duo hardware for three years, so this isn’t an immediate reaction to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, Huawei’s Mate X, or anything else.

Although it can take calls, Panay stresses that the device was not a phone but a “Surface” – Microsoft’s new category for personal technology.

So, what are some of the exciting USP’s of this product over a regular smartphone?

Dragging and dropping content between apps and displays on the Duo.
Project xCloud could potentially be used to have a game running on one side and a controller on the other (for extra curricular activity or lunch breaks of course!)
It is early for the software side of things, and Microsoft hasn’t figured out all the scenarios yet. We are sure there will be lots of exciting further developments at launch stage.

An interesting question might be: what happens when devices the size of this Surface Duo can support larger screen sizes? A smartphone that converts into a tablet, a laptop, and even a full PC with a dock has long been the sci-fi dream of the future, and it’s entirely possible we’ll get a device that delivers this in the next decade.

So, do you think that these dual-screen devices are truly the new device category we’ve all been waiting for?

The Surface Duo will be available to buy in late 2020. We certainly have quite a few takers in the Evoke offices to trial this one! Watch this space!

Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’

The Evoke team favour their tablets when visiting customers or whilst travelling as they are much less bulky and more flexible to use. If you would like to discuss or brainstorm your tablet strategy for your flexible workers with one of the Evoke team, please don’t hesitate to call us on 01509 278278 or if you prefer, you can email the team at hello@evoketelecom.local

At Evoke we are passionate about doing our bit to support the planet by reducing plastic, walking to work, recycling, eating sustainably, using energy efficient light bulbs, and saving energy.

With Green energy now finally affordable, we are delighted to be able to offer best value, sustainable green energy to all our customers.

We can also help our customers get the best value from their energy contracts, reducing their energy consumption, minimising their carbon footprint and ensuring that their bills are right.

We remove the stress of dealing with the energy contracts by contacting your existing and new supplier, as well as managing the process throughout, from start to finish.

Renewable energy will be world’s main power source by 2040, says BP

• All the Green Products we provide use power generated from 100% renewable sources.
• They come with a zero emissions rating and are backed with a “Guarantee of Origin”, certifying that the electricity has been generated exclusively through wind (hydro assets)
• Meeting the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, the electricity purchased can be matched to REGOs (Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin) allowing you to report zero emissions for “Scope 2” purchased electricity.
• Half hourly metering and Smart Metering ensure you always achieve best value and efficiency in the management of energy consumption.
• We can also let you know how many tonnes of carbon switching your business to a renewable tariff from Evoke will save.

Evoke Telecom’s Call to Action

If you are interested in switching to a 100% renewable product then please upload your existing energy bill/s by clicking the link below:

Free telecoms audit

…or attach a copy of your bill to an email and send to hello@evoketelecom.local

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Bringing AI to the every day.

Artificial Intelligence or AI, is fundamentally re-shaping the way we live and work, making us more productive and efficient in our jobs.

When you perform a Google search, the search engine uses intelligent algorithms to figure out what you want to see so you don’t spend forever sorting through irrelevant results. When you ask Siri or Amazon Alexa what the weather is going to be like at the weekend, the virtual assistant uses natural language processing and understanding to collect information from your query and generate a response.

AI has firmly made its way into the telephone system and contact centre space and is already being actively used in 8 out of 10 businesses to improve effective customer engagement and experience.

Telecoms is one of the fastest growing area for AI used to both improve customer experience and support as well as predictive maintenance to improve network reliability.

Forrester predicts that investment in AI will increase more than 300% over the next year.

Where are we seeing examples of some of our Evoke customers using AI?

Auto Attendant – Is the most-simplest form of AI. Customers can simply, in their own language (one of 16 supported languages) ask to speak to a specific person or department and using natural language speech recognition, the telephony solution can route the customer to the right place, without the need for any human intervention or complex and lengthy menu options (press 1 for this, 2 for this etc.)

Self Service options – First, intelligent algorithms can quickly and automatically find the right information for customers in the quickest times by delivering self-service options. In other words, AI gives your customers a change to answer their questions themselves before they interact with a live customer services representative. AI self service solutions can also provide support and self-service solutions around the clock. This will enable businesses to provide automated “always-on” support, available 24/7, supporting customers that can’t always make contact during normal business hours.

By 2035 AI technologies are expected to improve productivity in business by up to 40%.

Support for Customer Service employees – Not only is AI great for helping customers, it can give customer service representatives more information to help them handle problems quickly, delivering faster resolutions to customers. The telephone system can also ensure that the customers are directed to the right customer service representative that has the full knowledge to support their query, reducing the frustration of passing customers from one team to the next.

Customer Experience (CX) – We can use software that’s capable of listening to calls and deciphering the impact that certain words or phrases have on a customer’s emotions. Artificial Intelligence can detect the sentiment of a customer and provide actionable advice on how a customer services representative can improve the customers experience in seconds. Artificial Intelligence can also analyse customer data and not only help companies upsell and cross-sell relevant products but also develop better products and services,  marketed to their customers in the way they want to be marketed to.

In summary, artificial intelligence has thus far enabled the telecommunications industry to extract insights from data, made it easier to resolve issues, manage daily business more efficiently and provide improved customer service and satisfaction. This provides us with a great example of how adopting AI isn’t just beneficial to business, it plays a significant part in each company’s success, growth and ability to compete with competitors.

By 2030 experts predict that the value of AI, in general, will reach around $15.7 trillion. That’s more than the output of India and China put together.

Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’

If you would like to discuss or brainstorm your AI strategy with one of the Evoke team, please don’t hesitate to call us on 01509 278278 or if you prefer, you can email the team at hello@evoketelecom.local

Evoke solves a critical business challenge that other Cloud providers couldn’t do.

The key drivers for Johnson Paraplanning were: –

• Choosing a quality Cloud solution that met their specific business requirements from a trusted local supplier.
• Recognise individual clients by name depending on which phone number they called.
• Find a solution to automate the management of calls during busy periods when skilled associates were busy answering other customer calls.
• Provide full IP phone coverage in areas of poor bandwidth due to the age of Johnson’s lovely office premises.

There is nothing that makes us smile more than a returning customer. Having used Evoke at a previous business, Colin Johnson contacted Evoke for guidance. Evoke were able to make the following recommendations;

• Replacement Solution – The Avaya IP Office Cloud solution is Avaya’s very latest technology, building on the IP Office brand as one of the most trusted telephony systems in the world. Evoke selected this solution for Johnson’s Paraplanning as it was able to deliver on specific business requirements which were not available with other similar solutions on the market.
• Customer Number Recognition – Evoke were able to listen to Colin’s business challenge and confirm the Avaya IP Office Cloud solution, utilising the brilliant J129 and J179 handsets could present the name of the represented customer calling on the handset display, based on the number called. This allowed for professional and seamless handling of important customer calls that needed specific greeting and routing.
• Automate management of calls during busy periods – Evoke delighted Johnson Paraplanning by configuring a cloud monitoring tool called ‘SIP Trunk Call Manager’ to automatically handle calls should capacity exceed associate availability. Unlimited callers now have the option to queue or leave a message requesting a call back.
• Provide full IP Telephony to areas where wiring wasn’t possible was perfectly solved by Evoke providing a Wireless-LAN card that could be slotted into the Avaya J129 and J179 handsets, enabling handsets used in these areas to be completely wire free.

Above: Avaya J179

Just a couple of months in with the system now and the team are already delighted with how this solution is coping with and managing their business growth. The Evoke team are pleased as punch that we can share another great customer success story and we have helped another business to operate more efficiently and professionally by using latest technology as an enabler.

We are honoured to share a quote from Colin Johnson at Johnson Paraplanning:

“David and the team at Evoke were able to provide a bespoke cloud solution that others were unable to. Since installation we have added new lines to the service and we could not be more pleased, well done to all at Evoke and keep up the great work!”

Colin Johnson
Managing Director of Johnson Paraplanning

About Johnson Paraplanning

Johnson Paraplanning work exclusively alongside St. James’s Place Partners to provide quality documentation and suitability reports for all types of financial products. Johnson Paraplanning have a full understanding of the complex nature and stringent controls in place which ensures the suitability of all recommendations.

Since incorporating in 2018 they have grown a small business to a flourishing entity.
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Want to find out more about Johnson Paraplanning Ltd for yourself? https://www.johnsonparaplanning.co.uk/

Mobile phones have come a long way over the past 10 years with highly responsive touch displays, predictive text, high definition cameras and facial recognition but the next 10 years will see even more improvement and what might seem right now like ‘space age’ technology.

Mind Control – Did you know that Facebook Building 8 division is currently working on the development of technology that enables people to type with their minds at a speed of 100 words per minute. This is about 5 times faster than typing on a touch display. Can you imagine being able to think about what you want your phone to do, whether it’s opening an app, sending a message or playing a video.

With this type of technology in mind, the future smartphone could look vastly different than a physical block device.

Power – Battery life is a key topic right now as this is one area that seems to have taken a backwards step as the all singing, all dancing smartphone requires more power. In the Evoke office, we do remember our much-loved Nokia 3310 phones lasting a good week or two before you needed to charge them up.

The average smartphone takes about 2 hours to charge and lasts for about 9 hours, 30 minutes. Current research and development is focussed on reducing the 2-hour charge time to 5 minutes, using a key material, graphene. There is also further development in progress, looking at charging phones over the air, once they are within a certain distance of a transmitter.

Vision – This is where it gets super exciting. A new idea is well on its way to becoming reality. A new ‘Spectroscopy’ device is opening the door for people to use technology that has been confined to lab environments. A small device is built into a smartphone camera, which enables it to see more than the human eye. Imagine where this could go. It could be used to identify everything from harmful substances to providing augmented lines of surrounding vehicles in dense fog. This upcoming development is set to take the mobile industry by storm.

5G – We can’t talk about the smartphone of the future by not mentioning 5G. 5G is the next generation of mobile network technology. It will improve your mobile experience and help you enjoy faster internet speeds, a more reliable data connection in busy places, and a near-instant connection when opening apps and websites, playing games or connecting to your smart home devices. To support 5G technologies, your smartphone will need to be 5G compatible and therefore, you will need to purchase a brand-new device. This is not ideal for everyone if you aren’t due an upgrade or organisational refresh but there are some stunning devices coming out over the next few months for those lucky enough to have budget to invest.

5G will be gradually rolled out over the UK’s major cities in 2019 and 2020. We will keep you updated on progress.

Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’

If you would like to learn more about how Evoke can help you manage and save money on your business mobiles or help you with the upgrade to 5G, please get in touch with our lovely sales team by dialling  01509 278278 or if you prefer, you can email the team at hello@evoketelecom.local

Take the headache out of headsets with Evoke

If we had a pound for every customer that said “Oh, do you do headsets, our current provider is a nightmare”…

For anyone that uses headsets, you will be more than aware of the minefield of model and connectivity and compatibility options. If you get it wrong, it can cost a fortune in time and money to put right.

Evoke can make headset procurement super simple and ensure you don’t waste valuable time and effort out of your busy day.

If you have a company standard make and model of headset, simply let us know what that is and the price you are currently paying. The Evoke consumables team will shop around and provide you with the best possible market price.

If you need advice on headset type and compatibility, simply contact the sales team and they will walk you through the options available to ensure you get exactly what you are looking for.

Remember, it is a consumable item so the more you purchase, the better the discount level we can achieve. It is sometimes worth saving up a few headset requests and ordering in one batch.

If you are considering whether headsets could be a benefit to your business, here are some of the key advantages:

Productivity – Recent studies have suggested that by using a headset, the hands of employees are free to focus on other tasks, pushing up productivity by as much as 43 per cent.

While regular headsets enable you to keep your hands free, the use of a wireless option means that users can leave their desks and move around during calls, whilst a simple handset lifter / ehs cable allows users to answer the telephone whilst away from their desk.

Headsets also eliminate the need to hold a phone to one ear, which can often lead to poor posture and back pain.

Quality – Wearing a headset means the microphone stays in the same position, no matter how much users move their head. This means the voice quality and volume stays constant.

Better still, the right type of headset will also offer a microphone with noise-cancelling technology, allowing for companies to offer a great service, even if they happen to be in a noisy environment.

Mobile – With many companies having a broad mixture of office, field and home workers, the headset has become an important tool in supporting employees as they work remotely from the office. Headsets allow employees to talk to customers and colleagues while sending and receiving information on their device.

Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’

If you would like more information on how Evoke can help you with Headsets or any other telecoms consumables, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Our expert team can be contacted at hello@evoketelecom.local or 01509 278278.