Monthly Archives: August 2016

Proactive Networking Monitoring: What & Why

Proactive Network MonitoringYour business relies more and more on healthy network infrastructure. Migration to Cloud, Compliance and IT Security all fuel the case to proactively monitor your network health. By proactively scanning your network, you can identify bottlenecks and other irregularities that could impact your network performance and network security. Identifying network compromise in advance will save your business time and money in the long run.

Here are some considerations of what to proactively monitor on your network and why:

Monitor Your Network Performance

Network performance monitoring may identify a number of issues impacting your employee productivity. In some cases it may be a hardware failure (network switch or router) that is causing intermittent outage. Data-intensive applications (e.g. remote backup, call center or VoIP) may need optimization to improve overall network performance. Regular proactive network monitoring will identify these issues that can easily be remediated to avoid any unnecessary downtime, loss of employee productivity, or other failures such as dropped calls and failed backups.

Monitor Your Network Access

A periodic scan of devices attached to your network will identify any unauthorized access to your network. You may identify devices including desktop, laptop and mobile access from terminated employees, unauthorized access on your wireless network, and other potential compromises to your network. A regular scan of your network helps you stay in compliance and avoid any security compromise.

Monitor Your Network Utilization

By monitoring your network utilization, you may identify usage patterns impacting your overall network performance. Social media and streaming technologies can chew up your company bandwidth. By monitoring your utilization you may need to implement internal policies on use of streaming and digital media to free up bandwidth for mission-critical services.

Monitor Your Network Security

Your network is as strong as its weakest link. Periodically monitor your network endpoints to ensure Operating System patch, Antivirus and Malware definitions are all up to date. One device out of compliance could be infected and compromise your entire network.

Proactive Network Monitoring is a healthy best practice that saves you money and time while reducing business risk. If you are unsure of your network health or need to know more about network monitoring contact your network specialist today.

What’s Driving Digital Transformation of Business: Hello – Cloud Contact Center

Contact CentersDigital Transformation of Business is a critical component of maintaining competitive advantage in many industries. Rapid response to customer inquires, automated responses to self-service inquires, and ability to communicate across digital channels accelerate the buyer journey, solidifies customer loyalty and can take cost out of operations. According to a recent report by Frost and Sullivan on Contact Center Modernization, the Cloud Contact Center market is expected to grow to over $3 billion by 2017. Given the rapid growth of the Cloud Contact Center Solutions, it is no surprise businesses of all sizes are adopting this technology to accelerate Digital Transformation.

Your network and IT infrastructure is critical to the success of a Cloud Contact Center deployment. Here are three considerations to ensure you get the most from your Cloud Contact Center:

Using Cloud Contact Center for Competitive Advantage

By shifting the workloads of your Contact Center to the Cloud, you are leveraging the reliability and availability of the infrastructure to your Cloud Contact Center supplier. This supplier can take on the responsibility of repairing hardware failures, software glitches and other configuration errors. This allows your operations staff to focus on process improvement, call center efficiency, compliance and more. You should expect improved margins, while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Bullet-Proof Network Infrastructure and Your Cloud Contact Center

It is critical to your success to have your network optimized to handle voice traffic. Using affordable technologies, including Software Defined Networks, you can prioritize Voice Traffic over other activities. Setting network policy for priority and usage of Voice over streaming video and other bandwidth-consuming activities will help ensure your calls are clear. Having multi-path capability to instantly establish a connection in the event of a bottleneck will help you avoid dropped calls.

Cloud Backup for Efficient Data Storage

“Your call is being recorded to improve customer service.” Recording calls for compliance, training and customer satisfaction excellence creates lots of data. Your Cloud Contact Center will need robust and affordable backup and data retrieval to archive all of that information and make it available for future use. Make sure you have a reliable system for backing up this valuable information, and periodically test your Cloud Backup to ensure rapid recovery.

Cloud Contact Center, CRM and Marketing Automation can all drive digital transformation of your business. Using the Cloud to manage these workloads makes these solutions more affordable and easier to deploy than ever before. If you are interested in digitally transforming your business, contact your technology consultant today!