Blog: How sure are you that your Network is performing as planned?

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How sure are you that your Network is performing as planned?

While all companies are different, they all have one thing in common they most certainly have or are part of a network.

truth is that most company networks are similar to the networks that other companies use. So, this means that all companies can experience the same kind of problems related to their networks.

These include the need to grow the network size and complexity to suit the businesses requirement, whilst making sure the network is as future proof as possible.

The main concerns for all networks are related to commerce, communication and collaboration. After all, these are the three main aspects that keep a business running. In this case, the network can store all the business, product, and customer information.

With all networks there are a few aspects that should always be kept in mind. These include information theft, viruses, denial of service attacks and even hackers. All these events can not only lead to downtime but also to the loss of important data. As if this wasn’t enough, business reputation could also take a hit just for any downtime.

So, businesses need to ensure that their networks are performing as planned. So, how they ensure they are?

There are two main things that they need to do:

#1: Network Management:

Simply put, network management is all the actions that are taken in terms of ongoing maintenance, equipment deployment, management, call recording, device monitoring, planning, troubleshooting, service levels, among so many others.

Ultimately, the network should be managed by a team of administrators who should take the overall responsible for the network management. However, an administrator may not have all the relevant network monitoring access they require at the right time.

Therefore, it is extremely important for administrators to see everything and in real-time as well as having access to historical information all through one network management portal.

#2: Network Monitoring:

Network management, and Network monitoring go hand in hand. Even though this is a part of the management of a network itself, this is by far the most critical of all functions.

The reality is that the only way to know if a network is performing as planned is by having a monitoring system that is continuously searching, checking, and notifying of network issues, faults and alarms.

In some instances, business networks consist of a number of different vendors and technologies each with their own complexity, characteristics of supply, administration and operation and some even have the implications of a hybrid analog and digital infrastructure.

The important thing is that the Network monitoring services are all integrated into an easy to use, easy to deploy online management portal that enables their team to monitor the network proactively, thus resulting in any issues being resolved in a quick and effective manner.

If you would like to discuss your call recording requirements with a member of the Boom team, please email us at : info@boom.limited

Blog: Why is it important that your call recording service is MiFID II compliant?

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Why is it important that your call recording service is MiFID II compliant?

Since January 2018, the new MiFID II rules have been in effect in the European Union. But why is this important and will it impact your business?

The EU has been one of the first to step up to defend consumers. And the MiFID II is just one more step. While there were already rules determining transparency and protection for clients on calls, the MiFID II rules take things a step further.

Simply put, besides the rules that already existed, the MiFID II also introduces new requirements that include not only recording but also storing of all calls that can end up in a financial transaction. These calls need to be legally maintained by the company for 5 years to help create a greater level certainty and protection when discussing financial matters.

 

Company requirements

If a company wishes to be fully compliant with the MiFID II rules, they will need to be able to retain recorded calls on both fixed and mobile phones. So, with this in mind, their telecoms provider needs to be able to demonstrate that their solution covers both mobile and fixed calls whilst being able to easily retrieve calls for up to 5 years later.

But the MiFID II rules don’t end there. The reality is that with the EU requests businesses have an effective control over policies that are related to call recording. Including implementing monitoring programs that allow the calls to be easily retrieved, listened to you and when relevant, communicated across the business at any time.

 

Preventive measures

Besides recording, storing and monitoring calls, companies will also need to implement a system that alerts them whenever a call isn’t being recorded or retained due to a system error.

Without the necessary preventative systems in place finding out what has caused the issue could be a labour intensive process. All these types of issues and their explanations will also be required to be stored for 5 years.

According to the EU and the MiFID II rules, if a call recording service doesn’t comply with MiFID II rules, the business responsible for the service will be presented with a fine. In some cases, if many customers or consumers are affected by the service outage – the business could expect to receive quite a large fine.

 

Key facilities MiFID II compliant call recording service should include:

Once a business identifies it needs MiFID II compliance call recording facilities, it is important that the service includes the following facilities:

 

1) Does it include storage capacity?

Recording and storing all conversations for 5 years, will need to ensure that storage is included with substantial capacity for the future.

 

2) Is it secure?

Security is crucial. Businesses need to be guaranteed that the call recordings of financial transactions and information are secure, confidential and guaranteed.

 

3) Is easy to implement?

In order for the call recording service to comply with the law, it will need to be on specific hardware with the right software licenses and the appropriate expert personal available.

 

4) Is it affordable?

With calls requiring to be kept of 5 years, businesses will need to ensure that their solution is not only cost effective but also straightforward to implement.

 

5) Does it include Instant messaging?

With more and more calls and messages taking place on instant messaging services, businesses need to ensure that their solution includes all instant messaging instances – whether calls or texts.

If you would like to discuss your call recording requirements with a member of the Boom team, please email us at : info@boom.limited

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog: How will Insight as a Service (IAAS) give you one view of your network?

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The reality in today’s world is that data is king. However, with so many different data formats and so much data available, businesses need to have a way to access all the data with one holistic view of both their own and their customers environment.

How Can You Use Insight as a Service (IAAS)?

A problem that some companies experience is while they have access to a large amount of data, the data is fragmented across the business. As a result, no one has a proper view of what’s happening across all their customers networks. Ultimately, some companies are not able to get the most out of their data or be as proactive as they need to be to maintain competitive advantage.

If you currently deploy a CRM, you probably feel that you have everything covered already, whereas the truth is that CRM’s only go part of the way to creating a full picture. This is where Insight as a Service (IAAS) comes into place, as it uses a full holistic insight approach.

What Insight as a Service (IAAS) Does?

When you are using an Insight as a Service (IAAS) platform, instead of all the data being fragmented, you have a secure single portal to sign into which supports both customers and platform partners to view their relevant records, insights and trends.

When integrating IAAS and AI (Artificial Intelligence) you combine Insight as a Service (IAAS) with machine learning algorithms and automation resulting in a very powerful resource that all companies should deploy.

Insight as a Service – Affordability

While its understandable that not all companies can adopt a complete Insight as a Service (IAAS) environment, the truth is that if you have a smaller company or a limited budget, you can still take advantage of a one view cloud system that meets your business and budget needs.

One of the best things about using an IAAS cloud platform is the fact that the solutions are always evolving – providing a secure platform for now and the future all in one easy to view portal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog: How will Insight as a Service (IAAS) help keep networks secure?

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We live in a world that is ruled by big data and analytics. And the truth is that this makes it a big challenge for businesses. After all, they want to take the most value out of the data that is being collected. One of the things that have been making a huge difference between companies is the way they are combining both structured and unstructured data. And this is called Insight as a Service (IAAS).

Over the last couple of years, we have been realizing that data just keeps getting bigger and bigger and is being generated from many different sources at an incredibly fast rate. So, it is normal that most businesses don’t have the ability to keep all this data secured in a safe place or have easy access to analyse it for information purposes.

This is where Insight as a Service (IAAS) can help businesses.

 

What Is Insight as a Service (IAAS)?

Simply put, Insight as a Service (IAAS) is a cloud-based service that allows you to have insights, trends and provides businesses with the steps to take in order to leverage the information gleaned, to help reach their business goals.

In Telecoms, Insight as a Service (IAAS) can be offered in many different ways that include improving business productivity, easily managing multiple locations, call recording requirements, mobile and fixed line utilisation, business process improvement services, and overall provide a view of where the business communications need reviewing.

 

The different ways to use Insight as a Service to be more secure;

When you choose to use Insight as a Service (IAAS), businesses need to understand that there are some key areas to help ensure the business network is secure.

 

#1: Current situation:

This is where the information available is collated into one easy to view online portal. At a glance this information helps businesses to understand what’s working, what isn’t, whether there are any security issues, it also enables businesses to easily identify network usage trends, and premium rate calls through a simple administrative management portal.

 

#2: Self management:

Providing an easy to use End User portal to businesses, enables them to quickly and effectively manage their own needs. From redirecting lines, activation of new mobile and landline numbers, activation of call recording by individuals or groups all the way through to establishing correct hunt groups for their business.

An additional set self-management features are the end user business wall boards which give an immediate snapshot on the status of their business and can even highlight to show exceptions and analysis.

 

#3: Security:

The key areas where IaaS helps keep networks secure are in predictive analytics, enhanced visibility of the infrastructures, less human intervention and errors, analysis of services deployed and automated and real time Data, insights, analytics, and the best practices are then combined to ensure that they are able to provide actionable insights for your specific industry. This is also made taking into account the business goals.

Blog: What does Insight as a Service (IAAS) mean for businesses?

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All businesses need a high-level view of how insights will fit into their short and longer term future plans, but with technology businesses it’s even more important to ensure that the manual repetitive processes are converted into pro-active insight updates trigger for when the insight information identifies an issue that is about to arise.

This approach to using insights to create pro-active triggers will reduce the overall resulting costs if the issue hadn’t been identified early on.

The challenge that most businesses face is one of how best to use the value from all the data that is being collected and to combine both unstructured and structured data to create ‘insights ‘.

This is what will differentiate technology businesses from their competitors and provide a greater advantage from using the business data to their benefit.

The other key differentiator is to ensure businesses have the right level of Insight as a Service (IAAS) skills to identify and use insights effectively and to understand how to utilise this information to gain competitive advantage.

Blog: How does Insight as a Service (IAAS) help improve revenues?

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With the introduction of new telephony services in the ICT market it is essential for businesses to really be aware of what their ICT services are costing at the end of the month.

Being able to monitor calls (mobile and fixed), see text and skype interactions throughout the business, having immediate visibility through wall boards and to understand when someone is dialing premium rate telephone numbers; helps businesses to easily identify areas that need to be monitored to help focus on reducing costs and increasing revenues.

The benefit of Insight as a Service (IAAS) is that all these features and information should all be presented in one easy to view online portal. Providing access to the insights that are specific and relevant to each business.

By having immediate access to the communication levers in a business, it is easier to reduce unnecessary time and effort to monitor or collate information manually, enabling the business to focus on higher-level strategy issues instead of monitoring activities that may or may not be an issue.

Companies can use Insight as a Service (IAAS) to focus on the business issues and to be comfortable that the insight levers being automatically monitored through the portal will help them to focus on the activities that will result in sustained growth.

Infographic: Insight Driven Networks

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Take a look at our latest Infographic that explains why Insight as a Service is important for businesses to utilise.

Click here to download our Insight as a Service Infographic PDF

Blog: Insight Driven Technologies – The Future is Here

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Analytics are absolutely everywhere, and any business unable to compile their data quickly and effectively through portals and interfaces will be stuck, wasting time on manual processes each time something goes wrong in their network. For ICT and Telecoms customers, speed is everything. Organizations must adapt and find better, faster ways of getting an overview of their business health.

This is where insights-as-a-service comes in. The sister of SaaS (software-as-a-service), this is a new approach to presenting insightful cloud services and allows companies to use an interface that displays the insights they need to know from every corner of their business, almost instantaneously getting the insight they need to proactively target new prospects and upsell their current clients on services they need.

The ability to have clear visibility of their whole network for on-premise PBX, mobile PBX and their CRMs and applications such as Skype for Business, all in one view, will provide an edge the ICT and Telecoms market has not experienced before.

Insights-as-a-service truly is the next big thing to happen in analytics, and the market is expected to grow to $3.33 billion by 2021, according to a report from MarketsandMarkets. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the companies that will outshine the rest are those who effectively combine their communications and software, such as CRM, with advanced analytics, and use these insights to implement changes and strategies within their organizations.

Insights-as-a-service will allow businesses to analyse their interactions with customers throughout the whole customer journey, and will highlight areas for improvement, such as customer service interaction, or holes in the sales funnel that would previously have gone undetected.

In order to keep up with fast-moving markets, insights-as-a-service will become more and more essential to businesses who want to stay on the cutting edge of technology and telecommunications and is likely to fundamentally change the way the ICT and Telecommunications industry develops. Below, we’ve identified the top seven reasons why:

Top 8 Reasons Why Insights-as-a-Service Will Change ICT & Telecoms

  1. Organizations will need to adapt to insight-driven practices opposed to data-driven – the old data-driven ways are going to have to be let go and insight-driven practices utilised as the best way to interrogate data and create the best customer experience possible
  2. Data analysis can be, to a degree, outsourced – and this will allow smaller companies to focus on using the data acquired from IaaS companies to move quickly, outmaneuvering large organizations who are unable to react to the data as quickly.
  3. Businesses buying Insights-as-a-service products will have improved outcomes – those businesses utilising insights-as-a-service will have tangible outcomes such as revenue increase and savings on expenses.
  4. Small and Medium-sized businesses will no longer have to rely on basic data management – Insights-as-a-service will deliver even small businesses a range of data from across their business, from the moment a customer comes into contact them, to repeat purchases and ongoing relationships.
  5. Any sized business will have access to a much larger dataset – one of the true benefits of insights-as-a-service is the ability for those services to access much larger datasets and pass on the knowledge and benefits of these to their customers.
  6. Businesses can quickly attain the information they need and act on it – they don’t need dedicated workforces to spend hours and hours validating data, instead they can access the insight they need and act on it.
  7. Teams across the organization can quickly attain the same information through role-specific interfaces – so analysts and data engineers can collaborate without the need for your engineers to worry about how it is shared.
  8. It will improve business productivity overall – because data required to make vital decisions in the upper levels of the business, and elsewhere, will be able to attainable extremely quickly, cutting down on wait times while analysts collect and compile data.

The use of insight-as-a-service platforms is growing rapidly, and those businesses who utilize these seamless cloud services to quickly attain data-driven results will be able to produce clear-cut actionable steps for their business moving forward. This will lead to better customer acquisition and retention, thus leading to overall revenue increases for the businesses using insight-as-a-service platforms. Those unwilling to adapt will see their businesses fall behind the industry standard for growth, and IaaS will become the industry standard for small and medium organisations in the ICT and Telecoms markets.