Page 7 - December January 2018 2019

December 2018/January 2019 Telecom Reseller 7 Digital transformation in the contact centre:
Fhow to remain profitable and competitive
or businesses with large customer BOUGOURD everything they’d be able to do in the office. that a hosted solution gives your business, it service and sales teams, the contact A comprehensive VoIP solution will come also allows for a level of flexibility that ISDN centre is crucial. Whether your activity with a mobile app that will allow employees and traditional telephony solutions simply
is inbound or outbound or a mixture of both, By Natasha Bougourd, Lead to place and receive calls to and from the cannot. The ability for your workforce to take the success of your business can often depend Applications Writer at TSG usual business number. This is obviously and place calls to and from your business
on this one department, which means it needs to be running as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Business leaders are always looking for ways to improve the efficiency, and often ROI, of their contact centre operations. But with all of the technological advances that have paved the way for the wealth of innovative solutions available to businesses, it can be hard to know where to start.
Many organisations are turning to digital transformation to understand how to make their businesses as effective as possible. For the uninitiated, digital transformation is
the use of technology to improve business processes, boost efficiency and ultimately increase profitability. The contact centre has undergone a number of transformations since its inception thanks to technology, from the invention of switchboards that paved the way for the call centre to exist, to ACD technology that allowed for automatic call routing and the outbound dialler which brought about sales call centres.
Thanks to the evolution of the call
centre and the technologies that are now commonplace, these operations are running smoothly. But that doesn’t mean businesses with contact centres should rest on their laurels; to remain competitive and profitable, you should always be looking forward. One key event that will affect many businesses with call centres is the forthcoming ISDN end of life in 2025. BT has announced the end
of the technology that powers the majority
of UK businesses, with or without contact centres. BT is retiring ISDN for a number
of reasons including a lack of flexibility and
(https://www.tsg.com/tsg-it- support)
scalability, no disaster recovery options and increasing costs around using and supporting ISDN.
This end of life means businesses utilising ISDN must move away from the ageing technology to a modern solution that meets their needs. It’s important to move well in advance of the deadline, as ISDN will only get more expensive, the closer it gets to its end of life. One solution that an increasing number of organisations are turning to is hosted telephony, which utilises Voice over IP (VoIP) technology. Currently, only 18% of businesses are utilising the cloud in their contact centre operations, but this number is set to sharply increase by 20% year-on-year thanks to
the move away from ISDN. One concern businesses have is that cloud-based telephony will affect call quality; however, competent providers will prioritise your voice traffic to ensure quality of service (QoS).
There’s no doubt that an outage to a business contact centre would affect its bottom line. Disaster recovery is essential
not only when facing physical disasters, like office flooding, but also to protect against cyber threats. A hosted solution like Gamma telephony would solve this issue, with disaster recovery built into the platform.
A bad storm, like the Beast from the East that ravaged the UK in March, could prevent a lot of your call centre staff from making it to the office. Thanks to hosted telephony, your employees can use their mobile phones to do
essential for inbound call activity, but it’s also important to contact centres that primarily deal with outbound numbers. Think about it; if you’re expecting a call from a business, would you answer a random mobile number, or even a withheld number?
Naturally, an internet-powered business phone system begs the question: what happens if our internet goes down? Perhaps your internet provider is experiencing an issue, or that pesky bad weather has damaged the cables that supply your broadband. The solution is similar; you can get your office staff to make and receive calls on their mobile in the office or even at home, if you expect the problem to last a while.
Of course, there are many more benefits to a hosted solution beyond making your business disaster recovery-ready – although that’s an essential element.
A key tenant of digital transformation, contrary to popular opinion, is transforming business processes and operations to ultimately cut costs – whether it’s reduced time spent on manual tasks or moving away from legacy software, investing in the right technology will undoubtedly save your business money in the long run.
A subscription-based hosted solution eliminates CapEx, saving thousands at the point of entry. What’s more, you’ll no longer have to pay increasingly costly line rental; BT itself has estimated that businesses will save 78% by moving to VoIP solutions solely from eliminating line rental. Your finance team would surely love to see a solution that keeps some money in the bank!
Alongside the disaster recovery options
number on a mobile phone offers them a level of flexibility that was previously never available.
Another concern business leaders have
is productivity levels when working from home or outside of the office. However, study after study has shown that employees are frequently more productive when working from home. O2’s 2012 study is particularly pertinent, as it involved its large contact centre workforce. Thanks to no commuting time, an additional 1000 hours were spent working, and 36% of employees said they felt a lot more productive. Additionally, a similar trial conducted by a Chinese travel centre found its contact centre employees placed 13.5% more calls.
Whether your contact centre activity is inbound or outbound, those employees are on the frontline of your business and essential to its operations.
They can be your customers’ first contact with your business, or their point of contact for all things related to your business. Your company couldn’t operate if they weren’t around tomorrow, so you need a solution that means they’ll always be available. The additional benefit of mobility means your employees could work from home and not only be more productive, but be happier and less likely to leave, according to multiple studies.
With the benefits of disaster recovery, cost- savings, additional flexibility and the potential for increased productivity, your business should seriously consider a hosted telephony solution when the inevitable move away from ISDN arrives. n
“TSmall Cells” and 5G Powering
he competition to implement USMANI minutes to install, making it effortless for 5G is on, with countries like the CSPs to meet growing data traffic demand United States, China and South with more speed and cost-effectiveness.
Korea leading 5G trials and commercial By Faisal Usmani, Business The high concentration of a small cell launch plans. In the U.S. alone, Accenture Development and Strategy network also allows network organizers
will be imperative – and even more so when mass-scale adoption of IoT hugely escalates the quantity and variety of network elements.
Virtualization of small cell networks will allow network operatives to provide and control hefty numbers of access points more efficiently. In this situation, condensed bunches of cells in a high- traffic area could share a centralized controller that allows network resources to be allocated flexibly in harmony with traffic patterns. As 5G continues to progress, the ability to remotely upgrade whole clusters of small cells will also be valuable.
SD-WAN solutions also make remote branch offices (RBO) easier to maintain. When combined with 5G, end users
will experience significantly enhanced performance in applications such as video-conferencing, cloud computing and remote access.
Small cells do require significant upfront investment and a sharp learning curve from previous generations of wireless networks. But they will be a keystone of future 5G deployment, and indispensable for delivering quick, reliable and efficient 5G services. n
predicts these next generation networks could ultimately add $500 billion to the economy.
The 5G networks will be powered by small cells – compact base stations that are installed every few hundred feet. Any area with these antenna units will be able to provide mobile 5G customers with reliable data services and seamless data handoff.
BODY PRINT
For successful 5G deployment, small
cells are important because they utilize millimeter-wave spectrum, which lacks the signal range of the lower frequencies used by LTE services. Hence, to fulfil
the needs of next-gen services like smart cities, remote medicine and the Internet of Things (IoT), it is important to ensure that they are installed in sufficient density.
Their mini stature makes the cells easy to install on objects such as light poles, kiosks, billboards, and on the sides of buildings in an unobtrusive manner.
For some regions, getting the necessary
Lead, Communications Business Unit at Cyient Europe (www. cyient.com)
zoning approval for their placement has been challenging, but progress is being made. For example, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently approved an order to streamline 5G infrastructure rollout.
GRATUITIES OF SMALL CELLS
The unique type of wireless network
is perceived to play a critical role in offloading circulation from existing network towers. It will also allow Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to achieve more targeted and effective
use of spectrum. For example, the small broadcast area of 5G means that the same frequencies used by one small cell to connect with customer devices could be recycled in a different space to serve other customers.
Small cells can also take as few as 30
to more intelligently target usage hotspots based on a variety of factors such as capacity and coverage requirements, high-value users, and customer churn propensity.
SD-WAN IMPRESSIONS
Combined with artificial intelligence
and real-time analytics, SD-WAN will
be integral in developing the most value from small cell-powered 5G networks. An SDN/NFV-based control plane allows for the flexible and proficient distribution of network services to satisfy users’ different quality-of-service (QoS) demands. Also known as network slicing, small cells will be vital in making this scenario possible.
The high volume of small cell networks – which can require anywhere from five to 20 times more cells than LTE – will also raise challenges in terms of how they can be repeatedly optimized to deliver
the best possible network performance. It means that automation using technologies like SON (self-optimizing networks)