Advantages of Working with a Telecom Consultant

The options can seem endless when looking for UCaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Mobility, or IoT solutions. It can take a lot of research and time to figure out what is right for your business. Rest assured; this process does not have to be difficult. Using a telecom consultant can provide you with the knowledge and expertise needed to get ahead in the industry.

Here are four reasons why working with a telecom consultant instead of directly with a supplier is beneficial. 

1. You get a partner - Your telecom consultant serves as a partner and helps you support your business’s current and future needs. They are there to handle the ongoing care and issue resolution needed. Your telecom consultant is there with you through all the steps, to take care of your business needs and help you reach your goals.

2. Objectivity - A telecom consultant comes with no additional cost to you because they are paid directly by providers. This allows them to look out for your company's best interests. They will present you with many different solutions to choose from so you can find a provider that puts your business in a better position and aligns with your needs. 

3. Knowledge - Telecom consultants provide a well-rounded knowledge of different solutions and providers. They are your professional guides to finding the resources you need. These consultants understand multiple offerings and attend trainings to help you make the right decision. 

4. Technology - For telecom consultants to successfully get you what you need for your business, it is their job to understand the newest technologies. These technologies can save companies money and increase their overall productivity. No single provider is the master of all technologies, so having a consultant can help a company weed through which provider fits its needs.  

Your telecom consultant is part of your team. They are personally invested in seeing your business succeed. For more information, or to discuss options regarding your services, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help you in your business journey.

Three Advantages to Using a Telecom Consultant

A telecom consultant can provide you with the knowledge and expertise needed to get ahead in the industry. By bringing the wisdom of this third party into your telecom research, you will have a better understanding of what is readily available to you. Three advantages are readily experienced by companies who choose to use a telecom consultant.

1. You get a partner – your telecom consultant serves as a partner and helps you support your business. Your business's technological and telecom foundation can become stable with your trusted advisor's help. They are here to help your business's current and future needs.

2. A long-term commitment – your telecom consultant will handle the ongoing care, and issue resolution needed. Your consultant is there with you through all the steps to take care of your business needs and help you reach your goals.

3. Objectivity – a telecom consultant comes with no additional cost to you because they are paid directly by providers. This allows them to look out for your company's best interests. They will present you with many different solutions to choose from so you can find a provider that puts your business in a better position and aligns with your needs.

Telecom consultants are thought leaders and work for the client's benefit only. They are invested in seeing your business succeed. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help you in your business journey.

What are the Costs of Being Hard Down?

What are the costs of being hard down? Do you know? We are in touch with clients day-in and day-out and would say the vast majority do not know.

A failure of a critical application can lead to two distinct types of losses:

• Loss of the application service - the impact of downtime varies according to the application and the business;

• Loss of data - the potential loss of data due to a system outage can have significant legal and financial implications.

Take this into consideration:

• Research indicates that 60 percent of organizations don't have a fully documented disaster recovery plan, while 40 percent of those with a plan admit that it isn't very effective when a disaster does strike.

• According to Nationwide's Small Business Indicator about half (49 percent) of respondents said it would take their business at least three months to recover from a natural disaster.

• The average business suffers 14 hours of downtime per year, decreasing employee efficiency to 63 percent.

• Average resolution time per outage is over 3 hours.

• Due to the costs associated with efforts to get systems back and running, companies typically lose an average of 9 hours of IT staffing.

• More than half of companies feel outages can damage their reputation, and 18% feel outages are "extremely damaging" to their reputation.

• Failure to recover data can result in disastrous outcomes for companies without a disaster recovery plan.

Let's talk about your comprehensive disaster recovery plan. And if you don't have one, let's create one together. Give us a shout today.

Are You Remote Workforce-Ready?

Today the coronavirus epidemic continued to prompt new travel restrictions and emergency declarations around the world, with the U.S. State Department on Sunday warning citizens against cruise travel and Italy resorting to a massive lockdown affecting millions of people. Work at home declarations from the CDC and other government agencies are probably going to become the new normal. Not only could it become a temporary law, but it's also the best way to protect your employees from exposure to the novel virus.

So how can you as a business owner prepare to transition your workforce into a work-at-home team that still performs at a high level? Here are six things to consider before you go virtual:

HIGH-SPEED INTERNET - The first thing you need to do as a business owner is to survey your employees to see what kind of broadband they are using at home. To run business voice and video calls, they're going to need plenty of throughput. A good standard that should provide enough horsepower is 50 Mb down, 5 Mb upload speed.

MOVE YOUR PHONE SYSTEM TO THE CLOUD - Here are the key features of UCaaS that will enable your work-at-home employees by leveraging the benefits of unified communications in the Cloud:

• Video Conferencing

• Mobile App

• Collaboration

• CRM Integration

MOVE DESKTOP WORKSPACE TO THE CLOUD - With Active Directory, you can ensure certain file-sharing rules within your own Local Area Network. Two promising technologies address these features and move them all to the Cloud while maintaining centralized control over access permissions.

• Workspace as a Service

• Desktop as a Service

MOVE CONTACT CENTER TO THE CLOUD - Does your business have a contact center or help desk in-office? Having a Cloud Contact Center solution allows your employees to support your clients while working from home.

IDENTIFY & PROVIDE NECESSARY DEVICES - Don't let Coronavirus hold your company back; make sure that your employees have the technology they need:

• Mobile or softphone

• Desktop or laptop computer

REMOTE FILE SHARE

When you send your workers home, they must be able to share, collaborate on, and store files in the Cloud. The most popular cloud file storage providers are:

• Microsoft Office 365 - OneDrive

• Google G-Suite - Google Drive

• Dropbox

• Box.com

HOW FAST CAN YOU MAKE THE PIVOT?

If you'd like assistance in putting a work-at-home technology plan in place, contact us.

Telecom Companies Step Up to Fight COVID-19

The response from the telecom industry has been HUGE.

Many carriers and solution providers are offering free trials of premium services allowing you to enable video conferencing, teleworker, and other key UCaaS features quickly without getting sticker shock. 

Here are a couple examples of providers and associated sign-up links:

• 8x8 - Free Video Meetings

• RingCentral - Get RingCentral FREE for 3 months*

• NICE-inContact: basic but effective version of our CXone offering where we can get remote contact center agents up and running in 48 hours. There are implementation costs but we are offering a 45 day free trial on the software.

• Granite - Remote Redundancy

• Masergy - NaaS VPN for only $500 per month or UCaaS seats for only $15

Here at Caisson we are offering free telecom analysis and consulting to businesses and organizations looking to quickly pivot to a more nimble telecommunications stance. Please give us a shout, we are here to help.

RingCentral Communications Professional (RCCP)

Brian Wade has successfully completed all requirements for RingCentral Communications Professional (RCCP).

How to Protect your Customers' Credit Card Data

On the heels of Equifax's settlement with the Federal Trade Commission following its 2017 breach of over 145 million records, deemed the largest hack in US history, Capital One announced another large-scale breach exposing the financial data of over 100 million customers.

The hack was carried out by a former software engineer at Amazon Web Services, where Capital One stores its data. It's unknown if the hacker worked with Capital One at AWS or if her knowledge of AWS aided the hack in any way, but she managed to identify and breach a misconfigured firewall on a web application. This enabled her to obtain data, including 140,000 social security numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers, one million Canadian social insurance numbers and more.

This breach is expected to cost the company up to $150 million, and it should serve as a warning to companies across industries - especially those that operate contact centers - that insider threats can be just as costly as data breaches perpetrated by outsiders.

According to Verizon's recent 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, insider threats are on the rise, and with the contact center industry's high employee turnover rates, there are so many opportunities for sensitive data to be mismanaged by negligent insiders or stolen by malicious ones.

While it's important to put trust in employees, it only takes one bad actor or disgruntled employee to carry out an insider threat. With 72 percent of contact centers accepting card payments by phone, it is imperative that companies ensure customer data is secured from these and all kinds of attacks. The risk of not doing so hurts a company's reputation and negatively impacts a company's revenue streams - as evidenced by a recent survey we conducted which found that 83 percent of US consumers will stop spending with a business for several months in the immediate aftermath of a security breach or a hack.

We have solutions what can help protect against insider threats. Let us help you with cloud-based PCI security solutions to prevent any payment card data from being visible or audible to contact center staff. Payments are routed directly to a secure platform where customers provide masked card details using their telephone keypad, while still maintaining contact with the customer service representative. By operating this way, the risk of insider fraud is eliminated.

Contact us to learn how we can help guard your company and customers against threats like this and more.

Choose Caisson and Work with a Local RingCentral Sales Professional

If you would like to drastically improve your business communications give us a shout.

Engage Customers Like Never Before with SMS and Social Messaging

Be honest, how many times have you checked your social media pages today? Well, you are not alone. In fact, you are one of the 3 billion in the world that social networks use (and constantly reviews them). Since social networks are a large part of people's lives, it is natural for customers and employees to expect the same consistent experiences when they interact with your business.

The entire business organization can benefit when it expands its communication strategies, so it can reach customers and employees when and where it is needed. In the main social channels, you must continually add new features, today is the time to participate to continue changing expectations and anticipating the competition.

Is it time for your company to become social? These are some options to understand how social media messaging can improve your communication strategy.

80% of customers who ask a business a question through a social channel expect an answer within 24 hours. 

Social Messaging - Provide a richer customer experience by meeting your customers on social media.   

SMS - Engage with your customers through their preferred medium!

Turn your team into a messaging machine

• Marketing - Notify customers of new products, send promotions, and reach new audiences.

• Customer Service - Quickly resolve customer issues, provide status updates, and respond to feedback.

• Finance - Streamline payment processes, appointment reminders, and balance alerts.

• IT - Send time-sensitive notifications regarding software and technology updates and issues.

Contact us today to learn how we can help you connect with today's customers.

From TEM to Managed IoT -The Future of Managing Endpoints

Telecom Expense Management continues to morph. It was changed dramatically when mobile devices entered the workplace as the workers demanded BYOD so they could be connected with the workplace. Today, things - not just people - machines, autos, equipment are now connected and mobile. This creates new challenges to keep track of these assets and their communications. This means a whole approach: Managed IoT, to the internet of your things can be easily inventoried and managed.

IoT creates new endpoints - people, assets, or equipment.

An accurate, up-to-the-minute asset inventory is at the core. The focus is asset intelligence - how each asset is being utilized. We can incorporate information from the identifiers as well as capture unstructured data about assets - such as contract terms or maintenance records. We provide reporting based on user permissions and needs - day to day users, analysts, and management.

This is an exciting new evolution and has many use cases in healthcare, supply chain, manufacturing, cold chain, and more.

Reach out and see how we can help in managing The Internet of Your Things.