Author: matt

As of 25^th May 2018, much will have changed regarding General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance and your business telephone system.

One key area of consideration is compliance for Call Recording.

Businesses wishing to record calls will be required to actively justify legality, by demonstrating the purpose fulfils any of the following six conditions:

1. The people involved in the call have given consent to be recorded
2. Recording is necessary for the fulfilment of a contract
3. Recording is necessary for fulfilling a legal requirement
4. Recording is necessary to protect the interests of one or more participants
5. Recording is in the public interest, or necessary for the exercise of official authority
6. Recording is in the legitimate interests of the recorder, unless those interests are overridden by the interests of the participants in the call

This means that businesses who use Call Recording need to have drawn up specific policies and procedures outlining which of the processing conditions above they believe applies to them and where necessary explain how they will gain consent from participants.

What is more, if your business uses call recording you will need to consider and be clear as to which of the above 6 conditions applies to your business, or to specific types of calls.

As an example, for general call recording to monitor service levels or training staff in a contact centre, options 1 and 6 will apply. However, as the ‘legitimate interests’ of a business to evaluate customer service are unlikely to outweigh the interests of personal privacy under new regulations, in reality that only leaves gaining consent (option 1) from all participants as a necessary requirement.

Businesses should therefore look at how consent is requested and provided and how this consent can be captured for audit purposes.

Another consideration is what happens if the caller does not give consent?

Let’s look at some typical scenarios.

Inbound calls

An auto attendant message should inform the customer that their call will be recorded, but only if they wish to be recorded. Customers should inform the person taking their call of their decision regarding consent for call recording when the call is answered. At the point that consent is not granted, the call receiver needs to be clear as to how they can stop and delete recording thus far or how they will attend to the full deletion after the call has been terminated. There should also be policy in place to record that consent to record has not been granted, for future reference and audit trail.

Outbound calls

When you make an outbound call via a system that has continual Call Recording enabled, you must ask for explicit consent from the caller before the call can be recorded. If explicit consent is not granted you cannot record unless it falls under points 2, 3, 4, or 5. If these points are not fulfilled the caller should to be clear as to how they can stop and delete recording thus far or how they will attend to the full deletion after the call has been terminated. There should also be policy in place to record that consent to record has not been granted, for future reference and audit trail.

Internal staff calls

It is advised that businesses should within their employment contract include a clause that states that the use of a business telephone may result in the call being recorded. If staff members wish to make a private or personal call, using a personal phone is recommended.

Should you need fully compliant call recording software, that provides the ability to manage preferences ‘in call’ with a full post call audit trail, then do not hesitate to contact the team here at Evoke Telecom Services on 01509 278278 or by email at sales@evoketelecom.local  who will be pleased to help.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will govern all businesses in the UK on the 25th May 2018. This is a European regulation to ensure individuals privacy and rights when data has been collated about them. The key pillars of GDPR are as follows;

• Individuals’ privacy is respected and processes and systems uphold this by design.
• Right for the individual to request all data about them is deleted.
• Right to move the data from one data controller to another.
• Individuals have control over their own data and how this data may be used.
• Transparency for data handlers – if a breach occurs then the data protection authority and the individuals affected are notified within 72 hours of breach discovery.
• Severe non-compliance fines for businesses who do not adhere to the Regulations

What are we doing about this?

A full pre GDPR audit has been carried out at Evoke Telecom Services Ltd with resulting actions being completed;

• Key compliance policies updated and shared with the team.
• GDPR and general IT Security training sessions scheduled for the team.
• Scoping of development of our internal systems to allow for easy extraction of individuals’ data in the event of a Subject Access Request and subsequent removal if applicable.

Click here to view our Data Protection Policy and Privacy Notice

Click here to view our addendum to our Customer Terms of Service as a result of GDPR.

If you have any queries about either GDPR or your personal data please contact sales@nottel.co.uk

A telephone is a telephone, right?

Well actually no! Not when it comes to the hotels and hospitality industry. In Hospitality a telephone and more importantly a telephone system can be the difference between a 5* customer experience and a stay that you are not likely to repeat again.

The difference isn’t in what you the guest can do with the handset in your room, it’s more how the hotel can use the system to make your experience the best it can possibly be.

Most hotels run their room and client billing management through speciality hotel software. This software is updated when a room is being cleaned, a mini bar needs stocking, a client has used a billable service.

“So what?”, we hear you say ~ well, what about if there was a telephone system that allowed important information to be ‘dialled’ directly into the hotel software from individual rooms / suites in the hotel?

• A hotel can know when a room is made up by the maid dialling a short code into the room handset
• Refill the mini bar by simply dialling short codes into the handset in the room
• Update guests’ mini bar bill from the handset in the room
• Request maintenance
• Set a call limit or manage types of calls that can be made

The Ericsson-LG iPECS UCP telephony system is that solution. It has been especially designed for hotels with its optional built in software integration. This enables the telephone system to directly update the hotel PMS software and the PMS software to update the phone system immediately – via real time bi directional software.

Can you imagine arriving early at the reception desk to be told,

“I can see from our system that the maid started making up your room 15 minutes ago. If you would like to take a seat in our bar or reception I will pop across and fetch you when the maid’s servicing is complete. Our system will tell me immediately when she finishes.”

The Ericsson-LG iPECS UCP also offers the General Manager of the hotel much more. Wireless (and DECT) handsets, or a special mobile telephone app, can be attached to the hotel telephone system so key and mobile staff can be contacted anywhere anytime. This is so important for customer care and TripAdvisor ratings because as we all know, when a guest has a problem, they want it resolved now!

You can also have access to additional guest services directly from your room handset, e.g. wake up calls, your own voicemail, or the ability to have restricted dial to and from chosen rooms in the hotel. A conference line for business users. One touch dialling for the restaurant, bar, spa or concierge – and a whole host of other features to enable a hotel or hospitality venue to provide you with the very best customer experience imaginable.

If you run a hotel or you are in the hospitality industry and would like to know more please feel free to give us a call.

Why is it better to have your telephone calls and lines with your system provider and does it really matter?

When we install a brand new telephone system for a customer we can sometimes find that they already have their telephones lines in contract with someone else. Or, we find that they have been with good old BT for 100s of years and don’t really want to change.

When we suggest that it is better all round to have both your system and lines with the system provider, we can be met with a degree of shall we say ‘scepticism’. You know, that ‘sideways’ look.

So, is this a good idea and does it really make a difference?

We think it is and this is why. When your telephone calls suddenly stop working or you have a crackling line, or calls cutting out after say 5 seconds, you need to call someone to get it fixed. But how do we know if it is the lines or the telephone system that is at fault? The danger is that both will tell you to give the other company a call first!

How frustrating!!

We’ve had two good examples of this already this year.

The first was a Cheshire taxi cab company where calls were ringing but not getting through or calling customers were constantly getting an engaged tone. Not good for business as a cab firm where every call is usually a fare! We moved heaven and earth – including swapping out their system for a new replacement for free! In the end we established (when the new system still had the old problems) that the challenge seemed to be coming from the complicated incoming calls solution another provider had in place. Needless to say, the Taxi Cab company are currently in the process of moving the lines to us.

The second example is a golf club in Yorkshire. Customers were getting through and then getting cut off. Again, we conducted a full range of tests and more, finally advising a change to the line providers settings back at the exchange. At one point the line provider sent an engineer to site and reported that the fault was the telephone system! In the end we called them directly on behalf of our customer and hey ho once they made our suggested changes all has been ‘hunky dorey’ ever since.

So, as opposed to the perceived commercial risk of putting all of your business with one supplier, think about the time benefit and savings on ‘hassle’ when you only have one call to make. Be the problem the telephone lines, the broadband they may be carried on or even the system itself, it only takes one call to get it fixed. Genius!!

Needless to say, if you would like to know more, do give us a call – assuming, of course, that your lines aren’t down at the moment!

Paul Layte, Evoke Telecom customer and provider of Digital Accountancy Services, received an interesting call last year from one of his other customers, the guys from the start up Micro Towel venture ‘Dock and Bay’. In short, the message was ‘Paul, we been accepted on the BBC series ‘Dragons’ Den’, and need your help to prepare’.

Now most would be slightly phased by this request, but as CEO and Founder of Next Level Business and also a Business Mentor for Virgin StartUp – this sat right smack in the middle of Paul Layte’s comfort zone.

Many late night candles were burnt as the team prepared for their baptism of fire in ‘The Den’. Here is a video sharing some information as the team prepared for the big day:

Join Paul Layte and Andy Jefferies, one of the founders of Dock & Bay, to see the behind the scenes thoughts on what it was like to apply, how the process went and what Paul did to help them prepare.
Needless to say, the team were a massive success, securing bids from two of the Dragons and ultimately an investment for 10% equity from one of the show’s best known Dragons. Can you guess which Dragon invested? Watch this second video and all will be revealed.

With the battle finished, Paul Layte sits back down with Andy Jefferies, Co-Founder of Dock & Bay, to relive the Dragons’ Den experience.

Since securing the support of their Dragon, the team and the business at Dock & Bay have gone from strength to strength. This summer the team have a strategy and planning day at their Dragon’s house – and of course are taking their much-valued Accountant and now great friend Paul Layte along too.

So, how far would your Accountant go to help your business, and would they take YOU into ‘The Dragons’ Den’?

Evoke Telecom are regularly approached by agencies acting on behalf of clients wishing to buy our business – BUT last month we were offered the opportunity to buy a competitor. What an interesting process that was, and so it gave us the idea to share some helpful tips and advice from an expert. To that end, March’s guest blog has been written by Hasnain Khalid, a Senior Associate in the Commercial team at EHL (Edwards Hands and Lewis) in Leicester.

Here are some simple yet helpful insights from Hasnain:

Acquiring a business – by Hasnain Khalid

When deciding to sell or buy a business, you may be confronted with the decision of whether to proceed with a share purchase or an asset purchase. There are some key differences between the two methods which may influence your decision.

Share Purchase

A share purchase is only suitable where a business has been incorporated as a limited company and has share capital.

In a share purchase the buyer acquires control of the business by purchasing the shares of the company.  This is an “all-encompassing” approach whereby the buyer acquires ownership and control of all of the assets and liabilities of the company.

Any contracts the company was party to prior to the purchase are likely to continue to have effect as before, as the legal entity itself has not changed. This includes employment contracts.

Typically, a share purchase will be more beneficial than an asset purchase for a seller when looking to sell their business, as it acts as a clean break with no continuing liabilities for the seller upon transfer of ownership, except for those warranties, indemnities or covenants that it agrees to give the buyer the benefit of.

Asset Purchase

If the business being sold is run by a sole trader or is a partnership, the sale will take the form of an asset purchase. The seller of a limited company does not necessarily have to sell its shares when disposing of the business; it can instead choose to sell some or all of its assets.

In an asset purchase, the parties can negotiate between themselves to decide which assets of the business will be acquired and which will be excluded from the sale. Assets can be tangible (e.g. land, buildings, equipment, cash) or intangible (e.g. customer lists, goodwill, intellectual property rights). The liabilities of the business are normally retained by the seller, which makes this type of purchase particularly beneficial for a buyer. Careful definition of the assets and excluded liabilities is required in the agreement to achieve this.

When selling business assets, the sale may commonly include the benefit of key contracts the selling business is party to. Unlike a share purchase, in an asset purchase the party to those contracts will change, so whether those contracts are capable of being assigned to the buyer and whether consent is required must be considered. Similarly, if the buyer wanted to continue trading from the same property as the seller had been under a commercial lease, that lease may have to be assigned to the buyer.

Where the business being sold has any number of employees, the TUPE Regulations (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006) will apply which ensures the transfer of all employees to the Buyer.  Both the seller and buyer will have to ensure compliance with their obligations under TUPE.

Ultimately, there are many legal, commercial and tax implications to consider when making the decision as to the best way to sell or purchase a business.

A sound insight there from Hasnain – here are his details if you would like to know more about Hasnain and his background – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hasnain-khalid-06b1a0123/

Today, telephony and communication is as much about software as it is hardware. Indeed, even the hardware is managed and dependent upon software.

For a modern telephone system this has massive and increasing implication. As systems become more and more software dependant, the requirement to keep these systems safe, fluid and bug free increases in time, cost and complexity. This is having a massive impact on telephone system manufacturers and systems service providers.

Many moons ago telephone system manufacturers provided their customers with free software updates on the rare occasion that they might provide a bug fix or add a new feature. Sheer weight of work keeping software cyber safe, secure and bug free now takes a massive toll on manufacturer resource and cost. We all remember the heartbeat virus and are familiar with regular news stories of famous mobile phone manufacturers and other generic OS (operating systems) being hacked or plagued with yet another new virus. Well, the problem is exactly the same today for telephone system manufacturers as they battle to keep software and device firmware up to date and secure.

In order to fund this, manufacturers now separate out ‘Software Support & Assurance’ or ‘IP Office System Support’ as an optional and annually renewable chargeable item.

Evoke Telecom always recommends keeping your software support contract up to date.

So, what happens if I let my SSA lapse or even choose not to renew?

If your manufacturer software support has lapsed or you have chosen not to renew you are no longer able to update your software levels on your telephone system.

This means three things:-

• You cannot get updates to new services, new products, and firmware updates for your handsets
• You will not get bug-fixes to help with software glitches that can sometimes develop in complex integrated IT/IP environments
• More importantly, you will not get access to new security patches, as these are released, to help to protect you from cyber-crimes such as, hacking, ransomware and toll fraud, to name but a few of the more common criminal activities.

Finally, it is often cheaper to renew at point of renewal than it is to renew a lapsed contract as manufacturers often back date and in some cases add an administrative overhead for systems that have been allowed to lapse.

The choice is yours, but in our opinion the choice is clear – don’t lapse and always renew. In today’s modern digital IP society security 1^st is always the safest way.

If you are unsure, need guidance or just want to ‘shoot the breeze’ – then why not give us a call?

Effective communication is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of doing business. With an increasing number of businesses embracing Unified Communications technology, headsets are becoming a key catalyst in increasing productivity and supporting mobility. Previously headsets have been viewed as a ‘peripheral’ commodity item that large call centres use. Now the headset market is really exploding as the benefits of headsets are starting to be more widely recognised and accepted as important business tools. As more businesses move to smaller premises and smaller desk footprints to reduce costs and maximise space, at Evoke, we are often asked to deploy telephony solutions with soft clients only where the computer or laptop is responsible for call control. Without a physical handset, a good headset is important to ensure call quality and a good experience for the customer and employee.

Productivity

Recent studies have proven that by using a headset, the hands of employees are free to focus on other tasks, pushing up productivity by as much as a whopping 43 per cent. So, can the humble headset practically double your employee productivity or is this just sales talk?

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, while handset lifter / EHS cable allows users to answer the telephone while away from their desk through the headset ringing during an incoming call. The latter benefit means that workers do not have to spend as much time chasing up voicemails, enhancing efficiency and productivity. That’s a fair point and let’s not forget the health benefits of being able to regularly stand and move around along with the increased success benefits of ‘selling whilst you are standing up’ for the employees that are promoting a service.

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

Quality

While headsets can improve productivity, they are also capable of allowing employees to offer a better service.

Wearing a headset means the microphone stays in the same position, no matter how much the 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

Working on the move or from home has become common practice for many businesses, which often must make sure they have the right equipment to keep up with competitors and enable their employees to work effectively, as if they were in the office.

The smartphone has become one of the most vital tools to have when it comes to mobile working, often linked via a downloadable application to the businesses Unified Communications telephony solution. This has led to a greater preference towards headsets, as they allow users to talk to customers and colleagues while sending and receiving information on their device.

At Evoke we support the market leading top 3 headset brands – Jabra, Plantronics and Sennheiser along with the rapidly growing brand ‘Agent headsets’. We have had great feedback from this range and we believe they are good quality at a very fair price. The brand and type of headset you require will depend on how you want to use them and what environment your users will be working in. Headset types may vary amongst your team. The Evoke team can work with you to help you make the right choices. Please speak to a member of the team for more information or to request a headset quotation. (01509) 278278, Option 1.

Superfast Broadband

One of the biggest trends we expect to see in 2018 is customers upgrading and moving to faster broadband services. 

Many businesses have hobbled along on very low speed ADSL broadband services, in many cases getting less than 1Mb upload speeds. This has restricted their ability to take advantage of many of the cloud based services that are now available, which in return has hampered productivity. Slow broadband speeds have also stopped businesses from evaluating VoIP and IP telephony options, restricting savings options, remote working and important divert options when disaster recovery or business continuity options are required.

Superfast broadband is now becoming more readily available with speeds of up to 80Mb down and 20Mb up. These speeds are quite simply transforming the way companies do business and opening a wealth of business efficiency and communications options.  Top speed FTTC services are now available in most areas of the UK, costing little more than slower legacy products and can be installed within weeks. Some products also include a ‘performance assurance’ which means VoIP telephone lines can be added without the fear of call performance being affected by user congestion.

Software Defined Networks

For companies that require high speed exclusive lines, there have always been private fibre circuits available. These are delivered directly to your IT comms room and are shared with no other users, unlike the contended services referred to above.

A big change in 2018 is the addition of an SDN service to these lines. This means that a customer can order a line where they are only able currently to commit to a small portion of the bandwidth available on that line. For example, they might take 10mb on a 100Mb line that is connected exclusively to their premises.  Where the magic of SDN happens is that this line can be dialled up and dialled down in bandwidth instantly by Evoke should your needs increase and then decrease, pricing flexing up and down also depending on how much bandwidth you need at any given period.

We see SDN as a big win for data hungry yet cost conscious clients in 2018.

Move from traditional lines to VoIP

In 2020, you will no longer be able to order any new analogue or additional digital telephone lines in the UK. In 2025 all existing PSTN and digital lines in the UK will be turned off. The objective of this change is to drive the move of telephony and associated technologies onto the core IP network infrastructure around the UK.

This will have impact on every UK business that currently uses analogue, ISDN2 and ISDN30 telephone lines. The majority off businesses will have to start to make the technology move away from these legacy technologies soon.

The option is VoIP (voice over internet protocol) which will transport voice calls over your internet bearer / broadband services.

We would advise businesses to start thinking about migrating sooner rather than later. Now that ISDN is essentially viewed as a legacy platform, investment in it is likely to fall. This could mean that the standard of the existing network, and support infrastructure, could begin to suffer the effects of being retired well before the 2025 switch off date.

For more on the move from ISDN to SIP, click here.

Adoption of more telephone system features

2017 saw a massive uplift in businesses exploring what more a modern telephone system could do for them.

Customers are starting to have voicemails delivered as recording into their outlook email inboxes.

We are increasingly seeing customers adding mobile telephone apps to their systems, enabling them to make massive savings in calling costs and meaning they can be easily contactable even when out of the office.

Alongside new telephone systems 2017 saw customers taking desktop enabling software that helped them to ‘click on a number on their screen’ which in turn dialled the number for them on their desk phones. This was particularly popular with people making lots of outgoing calls (e.g. the sales desk) and areas like accounts teams where its easier to click on an email signature than finger dial the number.

Headsets for telephone handsets or PCs

We also expect to see an increase in the uptake of business headsets this year. Working with a headset, be it connected to your phone handset or your PC, allows you to continue to use your laptop with both hands whilst on the call. No more cradling the receiver between your chin and shoulder.

To support this, we also expect to see an increase in click to dial apps, where by highlighting a number on your PC your handset dials the call automatically for you on the click of a mouse.

We thought we would share with you the fantastic news from one of our key technology partners as they successfully emerge from Chapter 11.

Avaya are private-equity owned (Silver Lake Partners and TPG Capital) and valued at between $6bn and $10bn. Following years of profitable trading Avaya were struggling to offset interest debt and so in early 2017 made the decision to file for voluntary bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in the United States.

The objective of filing was to facilitate a debt restructure to remove the current investment shackles and in turn to enable Avaya to continue to channel a higher percentage of trading profitability into product and service R & D.

Avaya achieved US corporate history by swiftly entering and exciting Chapter 11 in less than a year. An impressive achievement.

“This is the beginning of an important new chapter for Avaya,” enthused Jim Chirico, Avaya’s President and CEO.

In less than a year since the commencement of Avaya’s Chapter 11 restructuring, Avaya has emerged as a publicly traded company with a significantly strengthened balance sheet.

According to Chirico the reduction of Avaya’s debt will improve annual cash flow by approximately $300m compared to fiscal 2016.

Avaya plans to invest in the contact centre and unified communications markets as it completes its transformation to a software, services and cloud solutions provider.

Evoke are working on two very exciting case studies, the first shares the journey of one of our customers that has become one of the first Avaya pioneers to migrate to brand new virtualised technology and secondly to demonstrate the benefits of one of our large UK customers that has embraced and benefited from the flexibility and ROI of implementing an Avaya video solution. We hope to share these with you in our February newsletter

BT has announced the phasing out of the ISDN and PSTN networks with ALL businesses to migrate to IP networks by 2025. We look at what this means for the millions of businesses who will be affected and what you can do to get ready for the switch.

Seven years may seem like a long time to get ready and though there’s no need to panic, this is a great opportunity to start the switch to SIP Trunking and begin taking advantage of its numerous business benefits.

SIP Trunking is already the recognised alternative to PSTN and ISDN lines for delivering IP technology (some people refer to this as VOIP lines) – allowing you to run voice and data over a secure internet connection rather than multiple fixed lines. By using virtual rather than physical phone lines, SIP allows for better flexibility, scalability and a large reduction in costs.

ISDN to SIP: benefits

What can SIP Trunking do for your business? Some of the key benefits include:

• Highly scalable allowing your business to easily grow; adding new lines is easy and these can be scaled up or down over time to suit your needs.
• Cheaper calls and no need for expensive ISDN / PSTN line rental.
• Provides the flexibility for remote and mobile working practices, such as the ability to receive calls to your office phone and your mobile at the same time without incurring any additional costs, meaning you can provide your customers with one number no matter where you may be.
• Simple and effective integration with your business email account, CRM system and more.
• Advanced resilience and disaster recovery in the case of severe weather or network failure.

ISDN to SIP: are you ready?

By 2020 you’ll no longer be able to purchase new Analogue / ISDN lines or order any additional ISDN lines for expansion, so if you were thinking of upgrading your telephone system soon then an IP solution with SIP lines will be the future proof solution your business needs.

By 2025, BT plans to have migrated all businesses to the IP network. As investment in ISDN is decreasing dramatically this could lead to a drop in the quality standards you’ve received from your existing network, which is why we recommend you look at migrating sooner rather than later.

Evoke has migrated many customers in the last twelve months from ISDN to SIP and we are working with lots of other customers to put together the ideal Hybrid Cloud or Full Cloud solution based on the Broadband connectivity in your area, but more importantly based on business needs and requirements. Talk to one of the Evoke team of experts today to start to plan your future-proofed journey.

What is Digital Transformation?

In a nutshell, Digital transformation and new technology adoption are competitive differentiators for today’s businesses which in turn accelerates the pace of growth.

By leveraging communications in everything they do, businesses can make decisions faster and improve operational efficiency.

An omni-channel communications approach sits at the heart of Digital Transformation — this simply means, putting the choice of communicating by voice, SMS, chat or social media squarely in the hands of the user. All of this depends heavily on the performance of the cloud-hosted unified communications (UC) networks that create the foundation for digital transformation. Even the best technology won’t be successful if delivered on an unreliable network.

Evoke offer five tips to get your business ready for stellar digital transformation performance:

Tip No. 1: Consolidate your supply chain

Typically, when there’s a network or telephony problem, finding its source is the most time-consuming part of the IT professional’s challenge in resolving it. That’s especially true for UC networks. Voice quality is very sensitive to network problems, and pinpointing the cause of poor voice quality is often like finding a needle in a haystack. To get the most from your UC investment, it’s important to take a holistic performance management approach. We advise customers where possible to trust Evoke with their network and telephony services which enables Evoke to take responsibility for the headache of finding the route cause of a problem without having to enter a potentially conflicting environment where a multitude of suppliers try to blame each other. This results in an elongated triage process that can cause knock on customer service issues for our customers. Evoke have had first hand examples of what would usually be a simple fix taking several days because of multiple suppliers used by the customer.

Tip No. 2: Test your network before deploying new services

Onboarding is a critical success factor in a UC deployment’s performance over time. Yet, in most cases there are a lot of unknowns on the network when we layer on new UC capabilities. Pre-deployment network assessment offers visibility into what we can expect. However, since voice traffic places different demands on a network than data, most available bandwidth and speed testing tools won’t tell you what you need to know most: what will happen to voice quality.

The Evoke team have extensive experience in supporting customers with their journey to a successful Unified Communications deployment and can arm you with the knowledge needed to effectively plan the right bandwidth and capacity to prevent any voice quality performance issues.

Tip No. 3: Change your support game from reactive to proactive

The cloud has changed user expectations for both reliability and easy access. Your support model must keep pace. Break and fix is yesterday’s news — digital transformation depends on the ability to be proactive when it comes to the performance of critical applications on your network like telephony and contact centre services. Evoke can pro-actively monitor your UC network and know before you do when there’s a problem with your UC solution. Your IT resources can therefore be used more efficiently which allows adoption of new services and increased productivity as well as a shorter time to fix issues as Evoke can either remotely dial to further diagnose or fix a problem or in the case where a physical part has failed, arrive at site fully prepared with a replacement part to fix a problem. We have had several instances where we have fixed a UC problem before our customers have even noticed.

Tip No. 4: Plan your Digital Transformation strategy with a trusted partner

As devices are increasingly interconnected, UC solutions have become more complex, with many moving parts — and that means the traditional telephony environment has blurred lines with data solutions and network connectivity. Evoke work with customers at many different stages of the Digital Transformation journey to map current and future business requirements.

With where technology and systems are heading over the next few years. Some examples of this would-be customers looking to implement a BYOD strategy (Bring your own device). This is a popular requirement across several verticals now and whilst technology is supportive of any personal device being used on a corporate network, there are much wider implications to data and system security to consider when planning this type of programme. Wherever you are on your journey, the Evoke team can offer their expertise and advise to help you plan and execute against your business goals.

Tip No. 5: Understand your user’s experience

User experience is at the center of digital transformation. Users want to access information, services and collaboration tools when and how they choose. So, how do we know that the user’s experience is a good one? UC and Contact Centre performance data can provide valuable insights on the user’s experience. For example, when do users typically drop out or abandon their session when accessing information and can their experience be improved? network health KPIs like bandwidth utilization, ping time and latency can point you toward overcapacity that will result in a slow or interrupted user experience. On a UC network, SIP trunks that are over capacity can cause a busy signal when your user picks up the phone, so staying on top of trunk usage is important.

In summary, achieving return on the digital transformation investment requires a strong network foundation and Unified Communications and Contact Centre solution that is supported by a trusted partner that works with your organisation to realise and maximise your Digital Transformation goals. Please don’t hesitate to speak to a member of the Evoke sales team to discuss this topic in more detail.