February 24, 2009

VoIP – A Solution for Fighting the Economy

Filed under: VoIP, VoIP in the Workplace — admin @ 2:58 pm
The benefits of cost cutting and operation streamlining that VoIP Telephony can off during the economic downturn is the focus of an article on TMCnet.com.
Many companies are turning to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) but there is still a large proportion of companies that haven’t jumped on the VoIP bandwagon, citing fears of implementation costs, quality issues or potential network risks as reasons for not doing so.
In fact, the fears are so great, that a recent report by Forrester Research revealed that 55 percent of North American and European companies claim to be unsure about how their organization can benefit from VoIP systems.
While the majority of the companies surveyed in the report were familiar with the implementation process and how VoIP cna be beneficial to them, it seems they are unable to grasp how VoIP can blended with unified communications platforms to increase performance, business efficienciency, and ultimately, return on investment.

The key to allaying these doubts is education of potential customers, on the benefits of VoIP.

Since it introduction a few years ago, VoIP has made leaps and bounds in improvements and it is important that these improvements are conveyed in any message given to potential customers.
While initially, VoIP was considered too great a risk to deploy and provided low call quality, the voip equipment available today delivers an optimal and secure way to lower communication costs, streamline operations and processes and increase mobility.
With VoIP technology, businesses can be armed against the economic storm as they reduce telecom and operational costs and increasing productivity.

February 23, 2009

VoIP key to call centre Industry?

Filed under: VoIP in the Workplace — admin @ 2:52 pm

An article on MyBroadband.co.za highlights a number of the benefits that can be received by call centres that invest in VoIP technology. Applications such as unified messaging, automated agentless outbound calling, enhanced call routing, and powerful monitoring and reporting tools can result in significant cost-cutting and office efficiency when compared to traditional counterparts.

The article focuses on the situation in South Africa where recent research has predicted that outsourcing services are set to increase dramitically in the African state with outsourced contact seats rising from 25,000 to 60,000 over the next five to seven years. With new international cables being laid down, the cost of bandwidth in the South Africa will be driven down and make VoIP a competitive option for call centres with offshore customers.

According to Switch Telecom MD Greg Massel, “though South Africa’s offshore contact centre industry has performed reasonably well over the years, it is not delivering the jobs and revenues that government and industry hoped for,”

A major factor in this lack of growth is said to be the perceived high costs of South African telecommunications infrastructure.

Despite this, South Africa is still a cheaper option that the UK. BPeSA (Business Process enabling South Africa) Gauteng have stated that South Africa is about 40% cheaper for inbound call centres than similar operations in the UK. Even still though, there is still stiff competition from traditional rivals such as India and the Philippines.

With new VoIP Systems, call centres have a viable strategy for companies wanting to lower their prices and either remain competitive or enter into the market and make an impact. All this can be acheived without compromising the quality of their services.

VoIP networks allow call centre outsourcing operations in South Africa to source a secondary international telephone number giving callers the opportunity to pay for their call in their local currency. with this benefit contact centres that offer offshore services can effectively replace fixed-line telephony with VoIP services.

Finally, VoIP networks can enable companies to implement virtual contact centres where agents can work work from home but attend to customers as if they were sitting in a call centre.

While all these benefits were brought up with South Africa in mind, it is worth noting that it is not only South Africa that is reaching this stage in it’s communications infrastructure development. Other countries can take advantage of VoIP systems to bolster their call centre markets.

February 19, 2009

72 per cent of businesses say VoIP is a key element of their strategy

Filed under: VoIP in the Workplace — admin @ 11:16 am

An article on Vnunet.com detailing the results of a report by the Communications Management Association (CMA), states that out of the 386 SMEs surveyed, 72 per cent said that VoIP was “a key element of their company’s collaboration strategy”. Additionally, 61 per cent said that wireless VoIP was “of significant interest” to them.

The report also reveals that nearly 19 out of 20 of the surveyed businesses believe that the UK is in need of a high-performance telecommunications infrastructure in every part of the country in order for the UK to compete on a global basis.

According to the Digital Britain, more than half of businesses want to implement symmetric digital subscriber line (SDSL) connections, but are not able to get the service where they need them. SDSL connections allow users to obtain the same bandwidth whether they are receiving or sending data across networks. This is vital to a fully functioning VoIP system as well as other web based applications.

February 17, 2009

Docklands Light Railway to use VoIP for Announcement

Filed under: VoIP, VoIP in the Workplace — Tags: , , , — admin @ 4:30 pm

An article on VoIP-News.co.uk reports that Docklands Light Railway is to integrate VoIP technology into its public address system.

The franchise operator of the DLR, Serco Docklands, has decideed to choose a new high performance LAN infrastructure that will make announcements possible via a VoIP system.

The new announcements system, controlled from Linux PC workstations at the DLR control station, will be integrated with customer information displays to prevent conflicting messages in public announcements and on display screens.

With a plan to deploy the new Voip-based system across all 32 DLR stations, the DLR hopes this will be the tip of the iceberg and that other key systems, including cctv systems, passenger information displays, and train management computer systems, will be bought across in time, to run over the new network, 

The project has already in progress and is set to completed later this year.

September 20, 2008

Yo! Sushi get in on the VoIP Revolution

Filed under: VoIP in the Workplace — Tags: , , , — admin @ 12:22 pm

Those wondering about the reach and potential for VoIP Telecommunications may be surprised to learn that Yo! Sushi, the Japanese cuisine restaurant chain,  is to implement an IP phone system across it’s 35 branches in an attempt to reduce its operational costs.

The company’s current legacy set-up will be replaced with the new technology and plans to extend the VoIP system to a further 15 outlets are planned for the next 12 months.

Through integration with their customer database and maps software, Yo! Sushi hopes to generate savings by routing calls through to it’s London call centre.

Internal communications will be streamlined via a conferencing feature in the new VoIP phone system which will enable regional managers to hold remote meetings with restaurant supervisors thus reducing the need for travel or for employees to subscribe to a third-party service.

A spokesperson for the restaurant chain stated “The ongoing costs of line rental and telephony maintenance were becoming a significant overhead to the business and, as we had plans to double the number of outlets within two years, this was an appropriate time to review our overall telecoms strategy,”

“We expect the system to pay for itself within two years, and believe that we have only scratched the surface of what we think the telephony system can do for us in the future.”

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