Are you thinking of deploying Skype for Business as your next corporate PABX?

Download the brochure

Many business are beginning to look at Microsoft Skype for Business (Lync) as an option to either replace their existing telephony infrastructure or to integrate it into their current environment to meet department or branch office needs.

While Skype for Business offers a wealth of features for instant messaging, presence, collaboration and enterprise telephony, there are still gaps in features that today's enterprises need if they were to consider fully replacing their current PABX infrastructure.

The CallXpress CX-E platform is the perfect complement to Skype for Business with its direct IP integration. CX-E addresses the gaps in features, delivering essential communications applications, such as:

• Enterprise-class voicemail to support your confidentiality and compliance requirements 
• Enterprise-wide and departmental speech and DTMF automated attendant 
• Informal call center for ACD and UCD functionality 
• Intelligent call completion based on schedules and user presence 
• Personal assistant to enable your mobile workforce 
• A full set of Information Access, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and notification capabilities

Download the brochure to find out more. Then call us on 1300 65 98 28 or email us on sales@cpstg.com.

Is your IT team ready for continuous software delivery?

With software vendors following Microsoft's lead and developing the model of software as a service, IT departments are becoming ever stretched in their resources.  Every software deployment requires testing for compatibility with each enterprise's hardware, software, cloud and virtualised environment, as it is rolled out to the users.

Another problem for IT departments will be to ensure there is sufficient bandwidth for such continuous rolling out of software upgrades, many happening concurrently.

Add to this the fact that IT staff numbers and budgets have been declining steadily for the last decade, and you have the perfect storm. An already overstretched IT staff handling an overwhelming number of help desk calls and pulling all-nighters while trying to restore business systems performance.

The solution is for organisations to develop application readiness practises - application discovery, analysis, incompatibility and mitigation assessments; preparation then testing piloting and deployment. All in a perfect world, right?

To alleviate the demands placed on IT teams, an option is to utilise a Managed Services provider to manage company application deployments. Already versed in application readiness best practises, application delivery is managed and delivered and then supported by a number of tiers of help desk support options.

Many CPS customers are benefiting from having a predictable monthly IT spend which allows them to accurately budget.

To find out more about how CPS Managed Services can assist your over-stretched IT teams and ensure efficient IT rollouts, email Ryan McAleer today.

Are we powerless without power?

Our staff member Henny Boonen was caught up in last week's Newcastle storms, where 20,000 of the original 200,000 people are still without power one week after the storm began.

Said to be one of the most devastating storms to hit the region in 80 years, a spokeswoman from Ausgrid said the storm caused more damage to the electricity infrastructure across the Hunter than any other weather event, including the 2007 Pasha Bulker storm.

For those not directly affected by roof losses or falling trees, residents without power found themselves cut-off from every communication medium they usually take for granted. With no power, no internet, non-operational mobile phone towers and smartphones with flat batteries, schools had no way to inform parents not to send their children to school and many businesses were unable to operate.

Those supermarkets who did had power restored could not order or receive deliveries which meant no fresh milk, dairy bread or produce. Once the goods were selected, shoppers received another shock. No EFTPOS facilities. And the nearest ATM?  Also without power.

You see the problem?

It makes you think doesn't it?  While we think we could do without light and internet for a few days, we forget that it affects the way businesses purchase goods and how we pay for them. Many businesses don't think of something as simple as a power outage in their disaster recovery planning.  But it's something to be seriously considered as we rely more and more on electricity to support all of our basic human needs.

Telstra launches vision for a more connected healthcare system

Telstra launches vision for a more connected healthcare system

2020... what's to come?

I've been in the IT game for more decades than I'm willing to share, and from my observation we have been blown away by innovation after innovation over this time, and invested capital into these advances to get the promised returns that technology leaders told us were possible. The end result is that many business and IT decisions were made purely for their perceived value, rather than a strategic purchase, and each built upon each other so that many times we needed to “rip and replace” earlier investments just to keep up.

The CEO of a leadership company, Mark Barrenechea, CEO and President of OpenText, has given us the opportunity to look ahead more than a decade, and ask the questions “where is all this going” and “what will it mean for businesses”?  Rather than continuing to flit from technology to technology, in his whitepaper he has given us a glimpse into the future, with a look at 3 major innovations that will be in place by 2020 and how we can use this knowledge to plan ahead.

These innovations are:

1. Disruptive Technologies

Some of these new technologies that will impact businesses are 5G, holographic TVs, nanobots, wearable technologies, 3D printing and the Internet of Things.

2. The “Generation Z” workforce

This will be the first generation that grew up with easy access to the Internet and will expect unlimited access to information. 

3. Mass Digitalization

The delivery of software, video, audio, games and other media will all be delivered digitally. Mark Barrenechea concludes that CIOs will need to transform from a record keeping focus to one of engagement and outlines tools that will allow companies to take these steps in preparation.

To read more download the agenda here.

Time to flick the switch from your old copper to NBN?

Post election, the country seems to have gone silent about NBN.  But while the media has finished talking about it for now, it is still being rolled out around the country, and quite a number of our customers in the Wollongong region are now looking at their copper network being switched off, their work having been completed around 2 years ago.  View the NBN video.

What a lot of people don’t realise, is that once the copper is switched off, consumers and businesses will have to “switch” their services to an NBN one.  While an easy response might be to just sign up with one of the major providers, it’s worth considering other players, particularly when the increased data speed can provide consumers with a much broader level of choice.

One such example is the cloud PABX.  In demand for an Australian cloud PABX solution needed for an Australian environment, CPS Technology Group have developed Jingl, a hosted PABX solution which is suitable for all types of users, from individuals or businesses including tradespeople, business services, not-for-profits, sales offices and engineering firms all the way up to corporate branch offices and government organisations. How it works.

 View Plans

Cheaper call costs

With Jingl you can really save on existing phone bills. JINGL offers much lower call rates, as well as untimed local and STD call charges. 

PABX alternative

Organisations can now weigh up the costs of running an in-house PABX against a cloud based service, which can often provide a much greater set of features with much lower running costs and no CAPEX expenditure.  The enhanced list of features available includes:

• Music on Hold
• Auto-attendant IVR
• Queuing of incoming calls
• Call forwarding
• Voicemail
• Call Recording
• Fax over IP
• Full reporting too!
• 
  

So if you've received the letter about switching, please give us a call on 1300 659828 and let us offer you a great alternative.

Learn more about the benefits. 

Wholesale enquiries welcome

If you're interested in adding Jingl to your suite of products, please contact us.

Don't lose sight of the customer in your quest for an app...

In the race to provide customers with an app for their smartphone or tablet, some organisations are forgetting the driver behind the need… which is to provide their customers with an enhanced level of customer service.  And the end result can be apps that do not deliver, or prove to be poorly designed which unfortunately can have the opposite effect.

Organisations have to take a step back, and address their mobile strategy from a customer service point of view.  Will the app integrate with back end systems?  After all, an app is really just another customer service touch point. If the customer is experiencing problems with the app, will the customer service agent they contact be able to see what went wrong?  In order to do this, organisations must develop mobile applications with tight integration to the contact centre.  So when a customer who is using the app encounters an issue, the customer support process is driven directly from the app. The app’s integration to the contact centre means that there is no need for customers to go through a lengthy query and response session with an IVR to categorise the call.  But, the app shouldn't just place a call. The entire history of the customer’s session on the app should be forwarded to the contact centre so that the agent will know precisely who the customer is, their entire purchase history, and what they were trying to do so that any issues can be resolved quickly.  

Interaction Mobilizer

Interactive Intelligence have built a toolkit that will allow businesses and organisations to generate one application to run on Apple iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices along with social media sites like Facebook.  By using this approach, the full range of back end interface capabilities means that all manner of functionality can be built into an app.  Companies can allow customers to place orders, query about shipments, or change their profile settings and preferences — in essence, whatever services companies choose to give customers access to. View the video

For more information, visit our website.